Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

What Is To Be Done?

BURNING QUESTIONS of our MOVEMENT

The Primitiveness of the Economists
      and the Organization of the Revolutionaries

Rabocheye Dyelo’sassertions, which we have analyzed,
      that the economic struggle is the most widely applicable means
      of political agitation and that our task now is to lend the
      economic struggle itself a political character, etc., express a
      narrow view, not only of our political, but also of our
      organizational tasks.  The “economic struggle against the
      employers and the government” does not at all require an
      all-Russia centralized organization, and hence this struggle can
      never give rise to such an organization as will combine, in one
      general assault, all the manifestations of political opposition,
      protest, and indignation, an organization that will consist of
      professional revolutionaries and be led by the real political
      leaders of the entire people.  This stands to reason.  The
      character of any organization is naturally and inevitably
      determined by the content of its activity.  Consequently,Rabocheye Dyelo, by the assertions analyzed above,
      sanctifies and legitimizes not only narrowness of political
      activity, but also of organizational work.  In this case,Rabocheye Dyelo, as always, proves itself an organ
      whose consciousness yields to spontaneity.  Yet subservience to
      spontaneously developing forms of organisation, failure torealise the narrowness and primitiveness of our organisational
      work, of our “handicraft” methods in this most important sphere,
      failure to realise this, I say, is a veritable ailment from
      which our movement suffers. It is not an ailment that comes with
      decline, but one, of course, that comes with growth. It is
      however at the present time, when the wave of spontaneous
      indignation, as it were, is sweeping over us, leaders and
      organisers of the movement, that an irreconcilable struggle must
      be waged against all defence of backwardness, against any
      legitimation of narrowness in this matter. It is particularly
      necessary to arouse in all who participate in practical work, or
      are preparing to take up that work, discontent with theamateurismprevailing among us and an unshakable
      determination to rid ourselves of it.

We shall try to answer this question by giving a brief
      description of the activity of a typical Social-Democratic study
      circle of the period 1894-1901. We have noted that the entire
      student youth of the period was absorbed in Marxism. Of course,
      these students were not only, or even not so much, interested in
      Marxism as a theory; they were interested in it as an answer to
      the question, “What is to be done?”, as a call to take the field
      against the enemy. These new warriors marched to battle with
      astonishingly primitive equipment and training. In a vast number
      of cases they had almost no equipment and absolutely no
      training. They marched to war like peasants from the plough,
      armed only with clubs. A students’ circle establishes contacts
      with workers and sets to work, without any connection with the
      old members of the movement, without any connection with study
      circles in other districts, or even in other parts of the same
      city (or in other educational institutions), without any
      organisation of the various divisions of revolutionary work,
      without any systematic plan of activity covering any length of
      time. The circle gradually expands its propaganda and agitation;
      by its activities it wins the sympathies of fairly large
      sections of workers and of a certain section of the educated
      strata, which provide it with money and from among whom the“committee” recruits new groups of young people. The attractive
      power of the committee (or League of Struggle) grows, its sphere
      of activity becomes wider, and the committee expands this
      activity quite spontaneously; the very people who a year or a
      few months previously spoke at the students’ circle gatherings
      and discussed the question, “Whither?”, who established and
      maintained contacts with the workers and wrote and published
      leaflets, now, establish contacts with other groups of
      revolutionaries, procure literature, set to work to publish a
      local newspaper, begin to talk of organising a demonstration,
      and finally turn to open warfare (which may, according to
      circumstances, take the form of issuing the first agitational
      leaflet or the first issue of a newspaper, or of organising the
      first demonstration). Usually the initiation of such actions
      ends in an immediate and complete fiasco. Immediate and
      complete, because this open warfare was not the result of a
      systematic and carefully thought-out and gradually prepared plan
      for a prolonged and stubborn struggle, but simply the result of
      the spontaneous growth of traditional study circle work;
      because, naturally, the police, in almost every case, knew the
      principal leaders of the local movement, since they had already
      “gained a reputation” for themselves in their student days, and
      the police waited only for the right moment to make their
      raid. They deliberately allowed the study circle sufficient time
      to develop its work so that they might, obtain a palpablecorpus delicti, and they always permitted several of
      the persons known to them to remain at liberty “for breeding”
      (which, as far as I know, is the technical term used both by our
      people and by the gendarmes). One cannot help comparing this
      kind of warfare with that conducted by a mass of peasants, armed
      with clubs, against modern troops. And one can only wonder at
      the vitality of the movement which expanded, grew, and scored
      victories despite the total lack of training on the part of the
      fighters. True, from the historical point of view, the
      primitiveness of equipment was not only inevitable at first, buteven legitimateas one of the conditions for the wide
      recruiting of fighters, but as soon as serious war operations
      began (and they began in fact with the strikes in the summer of
      1896), the defects in our fighting organisations made themselves
      felt to an ever-increasingdegree. The government, at first
      thrown into confusion and committing a number of blunders (e.g.,
      its appeal to the public describing the misdeeds of the
      socialists, or the banishment of workers from the capitals to
      provincial industrial centres), very soon adapted itself to the
      new conditions of the struggle and managed to deploy well its
      perfectly equipped detachments ofagents provocateurs,
      spies, and gendarmes. Raids became so frequent, affected such a
      vast number of people, and cleared out the local study circles
      so thoroughly that the masses of the workers lost literally all
      their leaders, the movement assumed an amazingly sporadic
      character, and it became utterly impossible to establish
      continuity and coherence in the work. The terrible dispersion of
      the local leaders; the fortuitous character of the study circle
      memberships; the lack of training in, and the narrow outlook on,
      theoretical, political, and organisational questions were all
      the inevitable result of the conditions described above. Things
      have reached such a pass that in several places the workers,
      because of our lack of self-restraint and the inability to
      maintain secrecy, begin to lose faith in the intellectuals and
      to avoid them; the intellectuals, they say, are much too
      careless and cause police raids!

Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the movement is aware
      that all thinking Social-Democrats have at last begun to regard
      these amateurish methods as a disease. In order that the reader
      who is not acquainted with the movement may have no grounds for
      thinking that we are “inventing” a special stage or special
      disease of the movement, we shall refer once again to the
      witness we have quoted. We trust we shall be forgiven for the
      length of the passage:

“While the gradual transition to more extensive practical
      activity,” writes B-v inRabocheye Dyelo, No. 6, 
	  “a transition that is directly dependent on the general
      transitional period through which the Russian working-class
      movement is now passing, is a characteristic feature,
      . . . there is, however, another, no less interesting feature in
      the general mechanism of the Russian workers’ revolution.We
      refer to the general lack of revolutionary forces fit for
      action, [all italics ours — Lenin] which is felt not only
      in St. Petersburg, but throughout Russia. With the general
      revival of the working-class movement, with the general
      development of the working masses, with the growing frequency of
      strikes, with the increasingly open mass struggle of the workers,and with the intensified government persecution, arrests,
      deportation, and exile, thislack of highly skilled
      revolutionary forces is becoming more and more markedand,
      without a doubt,cannot but affect the depth and the general
      character of the movement.Many strikes take place without
      any strong and direct influence upon them by the revolutionary
      organisations.... A shortage of agitational leaflets and illegal
      literature Is felt.... The workers’ study circles are left
      without agitators.... In addition, there is a constant dearth of
      funds. In a word,the growth of the working class movement
      is outstripping the growth and development of the revolutionary
      organisations.The numerical strength of the active
      revolutionaries is too small to enable them to concentrate in
      their own hands the influence exercised upon the whole mass of
      discontented workers, or to give this discontent even a shadow
      of coherence and organisation.... The separate study circles,
      the separate revolutionaries, scattered, uncombined, do not
      represent a single, strong, and disciplined organisation with
      proportionately developed parts. . . .” Admitting that the
      immediate organization of fresh study circles to replace those
      that have been broken up merely proves the vitality of the
      movement ... but does not prove the existence of an adequate
      number of adequately prepared revolutionary workers, the author
      concludes: “The lack of practical training among the
      St. Petershurg revolutionaries is seen in the results of their
      work. The recent trials, especially that of the
      Self-Emancipation Group and the Labour-against-Capital
	  group,[19]clearly showed that the young agitator, lacking a detailed
      knowledge of working class conditions and, consequently, of the
      conditions under which agitation can be carried on in a given
      factory, ignorant of the principles of secrecy, and
      understanding only the general principles of Social-Democracy
      [if he does], is able to carry on his work for perhaps four,
      five, or six months. Then come arrests, which frequently lead to
      the break-up of the entire organisation, or at all events, of
      part of it. The question arises, therefore, can the group
      conduct successful activity if its existence is measured by
      months?... Obviously, the defects of the existing organisations
      cannot be wholly ascribed to the transitional
      period.... Obviously, the numerical, and above all the
      qualitative, make-up of the functioning organisations is no
      small factor, and the first task our Social-Democrats must
      undertake ... is that ofeffectively combining the
      organisations and making a strict selection of their
      membership.”

“While the gradual transition to more extensive practical
      activity,” writes B-v inRabocheye Dyelo, No. 6, 
	  “a transition that is directly dependent on the general
      transitional period through which the Russian working-class
      movement is now passing, is a characteristic feature,
      . . . there is, however, another, no less interesting feature in
      the general mechanism of the Russian workers’ revolution.We
      refer to the general lack of revolutionary forces fit for
      action, [all italics ours — Lenin] which is felt not only
      in St. Petersburg, but throughout Russia. With the general
      revival of the working-class movement, with the general
      development of the working masses, with the growing frequency of
      strikes, with the increasingly open mass struggle of the workers,and with the intensified government persecution, arrests,
      deportation, and exile, thislack of highly skilled
      revolutionary forces is becoming more and more markedand,
      without a doubt,cannot but affect the depth and the general
      character of the movement.Many strikes take place without
      any strong and direct influence upon them by the revolutionary
      organisations.... A shortage of agitational leaflets and illegal
      literature Is felt.... The workers’ study circles are left
      without agitators.... In addition, there is a constant dearth of
      funds. In a word,the growth of the working class movement
      is outstripping the growth and development of the revolutionary
      organisations.The numerical strength of the active
      revolutionaries is too small to enable them to concentrate in
      their own hands the influence exercised upon the whole mass of
      discontented workers, or to give this discontent even a shadow
      of coherence and organisation.... The separate study circles,
      the separate revolutionaries, scattered, uncombined, do not
      represent a single, strong, and disciplined organisation with
      proportionately developed parts. . . .” Admitting that the
      immediate organization of fresh study circles to replace those
      that have been broken up merely proves the vitality of the
      movement ... but does not prove the existence of an adequate
      number of adequately prepared revolutionary workers, the author
      concludes: “The lack of practical training among the
      St. Petershurg revolutionaries is seen in the results of their
      work. The recent trials, especially that of the
      Self-Emancipation Group and the Labour-against-Capital
	  group,[19]clearly showed that the young agitator, lacking a detailed
      knowledge of working class conditions and, consequently, of the
      conditions under which agitation can be carried on in a given
      factory, ignorant of the principles of secrecy, and
      understanding only the general principles of Social-Democracy
      [if he does], is able to carry on his work for perhaps four,
      five, or six months. Then come arrests, which frequently lead to
      the break-up of the entire organisation, or at all events, of
      part of it. The question arises, therefore, can the group
      conduct successful activity if its existence is measured by
      months?... Obviously, the defects of the existing organisations
      cannot be wholly ascribed to the transitional
      period.... Obviously, the numerical, and above all the
      qualitative, make-up of the functioning organisations is no
      small factor, and the first task our Social-Democrats must
      undertake ... is that ofeffectively combining the
      organisations and making a strict selection of their
      membership.”

We must now deal with a question that has undoubtedly come to
      the mind of every reader. Can a connection be established
      between primitiveness as growing pains that affect thewholemovement, and Economism, which isoneof the
      currents in Russian Social-Democracy? We think that it can. Lack
      of practical training, of ability to carry on organisational
      work is certainly commonto us all, including those whohave from the very outset unswervingly stood for revolutionary
      Marxism. Of course, were it only lack of practical training, no
      one could blame the practical workers. But the term
      “primitiveness” embraces something more than lack of training;
      it denotes a narrow scope of revolutionary work generally,
      failure to understand that a good organisation of
      revolutionaries cannot be built on the basis of such narrow
      activity, and lastly — and this is the main thing — attempts
      to justify this narrowness and to elevate it to a special
      “theory”, i.e., subservience to spontaneity on this question
      too. Once such attempts were revealed, it became clear that
      primitiveness is connected with Economism and that we shall
      never rid ourselves of this narrowness of our organisational
      activity until we rid ourselves of Economism generally (i.e.,
      the narrow conception of Marxist theory, as well as of the role
      of Social-Democracy and of its political tasks). These attempts
      manifested themselves in a twofold direction. Some began to say
      that the working masses themselves have not yet advanced the
      broad and militant political tasks which the revolutionaries are
      attempting to “impose” on them; that they must continue to
      struggle forimmediatepolitical demands, to conduct
      “the economic struggle against the employers and the
	  government”[1](and,
      naturally, corresponding to this struggle which is “accessible”
      to the mass movement there must be an organisation that will be
      “accessible” to the most untrained youth). Others, far removed
      from any theory of  “gradualness”, said that it is possible and
      necessary to “bring about a political revolution”, but that this
      does not require building a strong organisation of
      revolutionaries to train the proletariat in steadfast and
      stubborn struggle. All we need do is to snatch up our old
      friend, the “accessible” cudgel. To drop metaphor, it means that
      we must organise a general strike,[2]or that we must stimulate the
      “spiritless” progress of the working-class movement by means of
      “excitative terror”.[3]Both these trends, the opportunists
      and the “revolutionists”, bow to the prevailing amateurism;
      neither believes that it can be eliminated, neither understands
      our primary and imperative practical task to establishan
      organisation of revolutionariescapable of lending energy,
      stability, and continuity to the political struggle.

We have quoted the words of B-v: “The growth of the
      working-class movement is outstripping the growth and
      development of the revolutionary organisations.” This “valuable
      remark of a close observer” (Rabocheye Dyelo’s comment
      on B-v’s article) has a twofold value for us. It shows that we
      were right in our opinion that the principal cause of the
      present crisis in Russian Social-Democracy is thelag of the
      leaders(“ideologists”, revolutionaries, Social-Democrats)
      behindthe spontaneous upsurge of the masses. It shows
      that all the arguments advanced by the authors of the Economist
      letter (inIskra, No. 12), by Krichevsky and by
      Martynov, as to the danger of belittling the significance of the
      spontaneous element, of the drab everyday struggle, as to
      tactics-as-process, etc., are nothing more than a glorification
      and a defence of primitiveness. These people who cannot
      pronounce the word “theoretician” without a sneer, who describe
      their genuflections to common lack of training and backwardness
      as a “sense for the realities of life”, reveal in practice a
      failure to understand our most imperativepracticaltasks. To laggards they shout: Keep in step! Don’t run ahead! To
      people suffering from a lack of energy and initiative in
      organisational work, from a lack of “plans” for wide and bold
      activity, they prate about “tactics-as-process”! The worst sin
      we commit is that wedegradeour politicaland
      organisationaltasks to the level of the immediate,
      “palpable”,  “concrete” interests of the everyday economic
      struggle; yet they keep singing to us the same refrain: Lend the
      economic struggle itself a political character! We repeat: this
      kind of thing displays as much “sense for the realities of life”
      as was displayed by the hero in the popular fable who cried out
      to a passing funeral procession, “Many happy returns of the
      day!”

Recall the matchless, truly “Narcissus-like” superciliousness
      with which these wiseacres lectured Plekhanov on the “workers’circlesgenerally” (sic!) being “unable to cope withpolitical tasks in the real andpracticalsense of the
      word, i.e., in the sense of the expedient and successfulpracticalstruggle for political demands”
      (Rabocheye Dyelo’s Reply,p. 24). There are circles and
      circles, gentlemen! Circles of “amateurs” are not, of course,
      capable of coping with political tasks so long as they have not
      become aware of their amateurism and do not abandon it. If,
      besides this, these amateurs are enamoured of their primitive
      methods, and insist on writing the word “practical” in italics,
      and imagine that being practical demands that one’s tasks be
      reduced to the level of understanding of the most backward
      strata of the masses, then they are hopeless amateurs and, of
      course, certainly cannotin general cope with any political
      tasks. But a circle of leaders, of the type of Alexeyev and
      Myshkin, of Khalturin and Zhelyabov, is capable of coping with
      political tasks in the genuine and most practical sense of the
      term, for the reason and to the extent that their impassioned
      propaganda meets with response among the spontaneously awakening
      masses, and their sparkling energy is answered and supported by
      the energy of the revolutionary class. Plekhanov was profoundly
      right, not only in pointing to this revolutionary class and
      proving that its spontaneous awakening was inevitable, but in
      setting even the “workers’ circles” a great and lofty political
      task. But you refer to the mass movement that has sprung up
      since that time in order todegradethis task, tocurtailthe energy and scope of activity of the
      “workers’ circles”. If you are not amateurs enamoured of your
      primitive methods, what are you then? You boast that you are
      practical, but you fail to see what every Russian practical
      worker knows, namely, the miracles that the energy, not only of
      a circle, but even of an individual person is able to perform in
      the revolutionary cause. Or do you think that our movement
      cannot produce leaders like those of the seventies? If so, why
      do you think so? Because we lack training? But we are training
      ourselves, we will go on training ourselves, and we will be
      trained! Unfortunately it is true that the surface of the
      stagnant waters of the “economic struggle against the employers
      and the government” is overgrown with fungus; people have
      appeared among us who kneel in prayer to spontaneity, gazing
      with awe (to take an expression from Plekhanov) upon the“posterior” of the Russian proletariat. But we will get rid of
      this fungus. The time has come when Russian revolutionaries,
      guided by a genuinely revolutionary theory, relying upon the
      genuinely revolutionary and spontaneously awakening class, can
      at last — at long last! — rise to full stature in all their
      giant strength. All that is required is for the masses of our
      practical workers, and the still larger masses of those who
      dreamed of practical work when they were still at school, to
      pour scorn and ridicule upon any suggestion that may be made to
      degrade our political tasks and to restrict the scope of our
      organisational work. And we will achieve that, rest assured,
      gentlemen!

In the article “Where To Begin”, I wrote in opposition toRabocheye Dyelo: “The tactics of agitation in relation
      to some special question, or the tactics with regard to some
      detail of party organisation may be changed in twenty-four
      hours; but only people devoid of all principle are capable of
      changing, in twenty-four hours, or, for that matter, in
      twenty-four months, their view on the necessity — in general,
      constantly, and absolutely — of an organisation of struggle and
      of political agitation among the masses.”[4]To thisRabocheye Dyeloreplied: “This, the only one ofIskra’s charges that makes a pretence of being based on
      facts, is totally without foundation. Readers ofRabocheye
      Dyeloknow very well that from the outset we not only
      called for political agitation, without waiting for the
      appearance ofIskra... [saying at the same time that
      not only the workers’ study circles, “but also the mass
      working-class movement could not regard as its first political
      task the overthrow of absolutism”, but only the struggle for
      immediate political demands, and that “the masses begin to
      understand immediate political demands after one, or at all
      events, after several strikes”], . . . but that with our
      publications which we furnished from abroad for the comrades
      working in Russia, we provided theonlySocial-Democratic political and agitational material ... [and in
      this sole material you not only based the widest political
      agitation exclusively on the economic struggle, but you even
      went to the extent of claiming that this restricted agitation
      was the “most widelyapplicable”. And do you not observe,
      gentlemen, that your own argument — that this was theonlymaterial provided — proves the necessity forIskra’s appearance, and its struggle againstRabocheye Dyelo?].... On the other hand, our publishing
      activity actually prepared the ground for the tactical unity of
      the Party... [unity in the conviction that tactics is a process
      of growth of Party tasks that grow together with the Party? A
      precious unity indeed!]... and by that rendered possible the
      creation of a ’militant organisation’ for which the Union Abroad
      did all that an organisation abroad could do” (Rabocheye
      Dyelo, No. 10, p. 15). A vain attempt at evasion! I would
      never dream of denying that you did all you possibly could. I
      have asserted and assert now that thelimitsof what is
      “possible” for you to do are restricted by the narrowness of
      your outlook. It is ridiculous to talk of a “militant
      organisation” to fight for “immediate political demands”, or to
      conduct the economic struggle against the employers and the
      government”.

But if the reader wishes to see the pearls of “Economist”
      infatuation with amateurism, he must, of course, turn from the
      eclectic and vacillatingRabocheye Dyeloto the
      consistent and determinedRabochaya Mysl. In itsSeparate Supplement, p. 13, R. M. wrote: “Now two words
      about the so-called revolutionary intelligentsia proper. True,
      on more than one occasion it has proved itself prepared ’to
      enter into determined battle with tsarism’. The unfortunate
      thing, however, is that our revolutionary intelligentsia,
      ruthlessly persecuted by the political police, imagined the
      struggle against the political police to be the political
      struggle against the autocracy. That is why, to this day, it
      cannot understand ’where the forces for the struggle against the
      autocracy are to be obtained’.”

Truly matchless is the lofty contempt for the struggle against
      the police displayed by this worshipper (in the worst sense of
      the word) of thespontaneousmovement! He is preparedto justifyour inability to organise secret activity by
      the argument that with the spontaneous mass movement it is not
      at all important for us to struggle against the political
      police! Very few people indeed would subscribe to this appalling
      conclusion; to such an extent have our deficiencies in
      revolutionary organisations become a matter of acuteimportance. But if Martynov, for example, refuses to subscribe
      to this, it will only be because he is unable, or lacks the
      courage, to think out his ideas to their logical
      conclusion. Indeed, does the “task” of advancing concrete
      demands by the masses, demands that promise palpable results,
      call for special efforts to create a stable, centralised,
      militant organisation of revolutionaries? Cannot such a “task”
      be carried out even by masses that do not “struggle against the
      political police” at all? Could this task, moreover, be
      fulfilled if, in addition to the few leaders, it were not
      undertaken by such workers (the overwhelming majority) as are
      quiteincapableof “struggling against the political
      police”? Such workers, average people of the masses, are capable
      of displaying enormous energy and selfsacrifice in strikes and
      in street, battles with the police and the troops, and are
      capable (in fact, are alone capable) ofdeterminingthe
      outcome of our entire movement — but the struggle against thepoliticalpolice requires special qualities; it
      requiresprofessionalrevolutionaries. And we must see
      to it, not only that the masses “advance” concrete demands, but
      that the masses of the workers “advance” an increasing number of
      such professional revolutionaries. Thus, we have reached the
      question of the relation between an organisation of professional
      revolutionaries and the labour movement pure and
      simple. Although this question has found little reflection in
      literature, it has greatly engaged us “politicians” in
      conversations and polemics with comrades who gravitate more or
      less towards Economism. It is a question meriting special
      treatment. But before taking it up, let us offer one further
      quotation by way of illustrating our thesis on the connection
      between primitiveness and Economism.

In hisReply, Mr. N. N.[20]wrote: “The Emancipation of
      Labour group demands direct struggle against the government
      without first considering where the material forces for this
      struggle are to be obtained, and without indicating thepath
      of the struggle.” Emphasising the last words, the author
      adds the following footnote to the word “Path”: “This cannot be
      explained by purposes of secrecy, because the programme does not
      refer to a plot but toa mass movement.And the masses
      cannot proceed by secret paths. Can we conceive of a secret
      strike? Can we conceive of secret demonstrations and petitions?”(Vademecum, p. 59.) Thus, the author comes quite close
      to the question of the “material forces” (organisers of strikes
      and demonstrations) and to the “paths” of the struggle, but,
      nevertheless, is still in a state of consternation, because he
      “worships” the mass movement, i.e., he regards it as something
      thatrelievesus of the necessity of conducting
      revolutionary activity and not as something that should
      encourage us andstimulateour revolutionary
      activity. It is impossible for a strike to remain a secret to
      those participating in it and to those immediately associated
      with it, but it may (and in the majority of cases does) remain a
      “secret” to the masses of the Russian workers, because the
      government takes care to cut all communication with the
      strikers, to prevent all news of strikes from spreading. Here
      indeed is where a special “struggle against the political
      police” is required, a struggle that can never be conducted
      actively by such large masses as take part in strikes. This
      struggle must be organised, according to “all the rules of the
      art”, by people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary
      activity. The fact that the masses are spontaneously being drawn
      into the movement does not make the organisation of this
      struggleless necessary. On the contrary, it makes itmore necessary;for we socialists would be failing in
      our direct duty to the masses if we did not prevent the police
      from making a secret of every strike and every demonstration
      (and if we did not ourselves from time to time secretly prepare
      strikes and demonstrations). And wewill succeed in doing
      this, because the spontaneously awakening masses willalso produceincreasing, numbers of “professional
      revolutionaries”from their own ranks(that is, if we
      do not take it into our heads to advise the workers to keep on
      marking time).

It is only natural to expect that for a Social-Democrat whose
      conception of the political struggle coincides with the
      conception of the “economic struggle against the employers and
      the government”, the “organisation of revolutionaries” will more
      or less coincide with the “organisation of workers”. This, infact, is what actually happens; so that when we speak of
      organisation, we literally speak in different tongues. I vividly
      recall, for example, a conversation I once had with a fairly
      consistent Economist, with whom I had not been previously
      acquainted. We were discussing the pamphlet,Who Will Bring
      About the Political Revolution?and were soon of a mind
      that its principal defect was its ignoring of the question of
      organisation. We had begun to assume full agreement between us;
      but, as the conversation proceeded, it became evident that we
      were talking of different things. My interlocutor accused the
      author of ignoring strike funds, mutual benefit societies, etc.,
      whereas I had in mind an organisation of revolutionaries as an
      essential factor in “bringing about” the political
      revolution. As soon as the disagreement became clear, there was
      hardly, as I remember, a single question of principle upon which
      I was in agreement with the Economist!

What was the source of our disagreement? It was the fact that on
      questions both of organisation and of politics the Economists
      are forever lapsing from Social-Democracy into
      trade-unionism. The political struggle of Social-Democracy is
      far more extensive and complex than the economic struggle of the
      workers against the employers and the government. Similarly
      (indeed for that reason), the organisation of the revolutionary
      Social-Democratic Party must inevitably be ofa kind
      differentfrom the organisation of the workers designed for
      this struggle. The workers’ organisation must in the first place
      be a trade union organisation; secondly, it must be as broad as
      possible; and thirdly, it must be as public as conditions will
      allow (here, and further on, of course, I refer only to
      absolutist Russia). On the other hand, the organisation of the
      revolutionaries must consist first and foremost of people who
      make revolutionary activity their profession (for which reason I
      speak of the organisation ofrevolutionaries, meaning
      revolutionary Social-Democrats). In view of this common
      characteristic of the members of such an organisation,all
      distinctions as between workers and intellectuals, not to
      speak of distinctions of trade and profession, in both
      categories,must be effaced. Such an organisation must
      perforce not be very extensive and must be as secret aspossible.  Let us examine this threefold distinction.

In countries where political liberty exists the distinction
      between a trade union and a political organisation is clear
      enough, as is the distinction between trade unions and
      Social-Democracy.  The relations between the latter and the
      former will naturally vary in each country according to
      historical, legal, and other conditions; they may be more or
      less close, complex, etc. (in our opinion they should be as
      close and as little complicated as possible); but there can be
      no question in free countries of the organisation of trade
      unions coinciding with the organisation of the Social-Democratic
      Party. In Russia, however, the yoke of the autocracy appears at
      first glance to obliterate all distinctions between the
      Social-Democratic organisation and the workers’ associations,
      sinceallworkers’ associations andallstudy
      circles are prohibited, and since the principal manifestation
      and weapon of the workers’ economic struggle — the strike — is
      regarded as a criminal (and sometimes even as a political!)
      offence. Conditions in our country, therefore, on the one hand,
      strongly “impel” the workers engaged in economic struggle to
      concern themselves with political questions, and, on the other,
      they “impel” Social-Democrats to confound trade-unionism with
      Social-Democracy (and our Krichevskys, Martynoys, and Co., while
      diligently discussing the first kind of “impulsion”, fail to
      notice the second).  Indeed, picture to yourselves people who
      are immersed ninety-nine per cent in “the economic struggle
      against the employers and the government”. Some of them will
      never, during theentirecourse of their activity (from
      four to six months), be impelled to think of the need for a more
      complex organisation of revolutionaries.  Others, perhaps, will
      come across the fairly widely distributed Bernsteinian
      literature, from which they will become convinced of the
      profound importance of the forward movement of “the drab
      everyday struggle”. Still others will be carried away, perhaps,
      by the seductive idea of showing the world a new example of
      “close and organic contact with the proletarian struggle” —
      contact between the trade union and the Social Democratic
      movements. Such people may argue that the later a country enters
      the arena of capitalism and, consequently, of the working-classmovement, the more the socialists in that country may take part
      in, and support, the trade union movement, and the less the
      reason for the existence of non-Social-Democratic trade
      unions. So far the argument is fully correct; unfortunately,
      however, some go beyond that and dream of a complete fusion of
      Social-Democracy with trade-unionism. We shall soon see, from
      the example of the Rules of the St. Petersburg League of
      Struggle, what a harmful effect such dreams have upon our plans
      of organisation.

The workers’ organisations for the economic struggle should be
      trade union organisations. Every Social-Democratic worker should
      as far as possible assist and actively work in these
      organisations. But, while this is true, it is certainly not in
      our interest to demand that only Social-Democrats should be
      eligible for membership in the “trade” unions, since that would
      only narrow the scope of our influence upon the masses. Let
      every worker who understands the need to unite for the struggle
      against the employers and the government join the trade
      unions. The very aim of the trade unions would be impossible of
      achievement, if they did not unite all who have attained at
      least this elementary degree of understanding, if they were not
      verybroadorganisations. The broader these
      organisations, the broader will be our influence over them — an
      influence due, not only to the “spontaneous” development of the
      economic struggle, but to the direct and conscious effort of the
      socialist trade union members to influence their comrades. But a
      broad organisation cannot apply methods of strict secrecy (since
      this demands far greater training than is required for the
      economic struggle). How is the contradiction between the need
      for a large membership and the need for strictly secret methods
      to be reconciled? How are we to make the trade unions as public
      as possible? Generally speaking, there can be only two ways to
      this end: either the trade unions become legalised (in some
      countries this preceded the legalisation of the socialist and
      political unions), or the organisation is kept secret, but so
      “free” and amorphous,lose[5]as the Germans say, that the need for secret
      methods becomes almost negligible as far as the bulk of the
      members is concerned.

The legalisation of non-socialist and non-political labour
      unions in Russia has begun, and there is no doubt that every
      advance made by our rapidly growing Social-Democratic
      working-class movement will multiply and encourage attempts at
      legalisation — attempts proceeding for the most part from
      supporters of the existing order, but partly also from the
      workers themselves and from liberal intellectuals. The banner of
      legality has already been hoisted by the Vasilyevs and the
      Zubatovs.  Support has been promised and rendered by the Ozerovs
      and the Wormses,[21]and 
	  followers of the new tendency are now to be
      found among the workers. Henceforth, we cannot but reckon with
      this tendency. How we are to reckon with it, on this there can
      be no two opinions among Social-Democrats. We must steadfastly
      expose any part played in this movement by the Zubatovs and the
      Vasilyeys, the gendarmes and the priests, and explain their real
      intentions to the workers. We must also expose all the
      conciliatory, “harmonious” notes that will be heard in the
      speeches of liberal politicians at legal meetings of the
      workers, irrespective of whether the speeches are motivated by
      an earnest conviction of the desirability of peaceful class
      collaboration, by a desire to curry favour with the powers that
      be, or whether they are simply the result of clumsiness. Lastly,
      we must warn the workers against the traps often set by the
      police, who at such open meetings and permitted societies spy
      out the “fiery ones” and try to make use of legal organisations
      to plant theiragents provocateursin the illegal
      organisations.

Doing all this does not at all mean forgetting thatin the
      longrun the legalisation of the working-class movement
      will be, to our advantage, and not to that of the Zubatovs. On
      the contrary, it is precisely our campaign of exposure that will
      help us to separate the tares from the wheat. What the tares
      are, we have already indicated. By the wheat we mean attracting
      the attention of ever larger numbers, including the most
      backward sections, of the workers to social and political
      questions, and freeing ourselves, the revolutionaries, from
      functions that are essentially legal (the distribution of legal
      books, mutual aid, etc.), the development of which will
      inevitably provide us with an increasing quantity of material
      for agitation.  In this sense, we may, and should, say to theZubatovs and the Ozerovs: Keep at it, gentlemen, do your best!
      Whenever you place a trap in the path of the workers (either by
      way of direct provocation, or by the “honest” demoralisation of
      the workers with the aid of “Struvism”) we will see to it that
      you are exposed. But whenever you take a real step forward,
      though it be the most “timid zigzag”, we will say: Please
      continue! And the only step that can be a real step forward is a
      real, if small, extension of the workers’ field of action. Every
      such extension will be to our advantage and will help to hasten
      the advent of legal societies of the kind in which it will not
      beagents provocateurswho are detecting socialists,
      but socialists who are gaining adherents. in a word, our task is
      to fight the tares. It is not our business to grow wheat in
      flower-pots. By pulling up the tares, we clear the soil for the
      wheat.  And while the Afanasy Ivanoviches and Pulkheria
      Ivanovnas[22]are 
	  tending their flower-pot crops, we must prepare
      the reapers, not only to cut down the tares of today, but to
      reap the wheat of tomorrow.[6]

Thus, we cannot by means of legalisationsolvethe
      problem of creating a trade union organisation that will be as
      little secret and as extensive as possible (but we should be
      extremely glad if the Zubatovs and the Ozerovs disclosed to us
      even a partial opportunity for such a solution — to this end,
      however,we muststrenuously combat them). There remain
      secret trade union organisations, and we must give all possible
      assistance to the workers who (as we definitely know) are
      adopting this course. Trade union organisations, not only can be
      of tremendous value in developing and consolidating the economic
      struggle, but can also become a very important auxiliary topolitical agitation and revolutionary organisation. In order to
      achieve this purpose, and in order to guide the nascent trade
      union movement in the channels desired by Social-Democracy, we
      must first understand clearly the absurdity of the plan of
      organisation the St. Petersburg Economists have been nursing for
      nearly five years. That plan is set forth in the “Rules for a
      Workers’ Mutual Benefit Fund” of July 1897 (“Listok”Rabotnika, No. 9-10, p. 46, taken fromRabochaya
      Mysl, No. 1), as well as in the “Rules for a Trade Union
      Workers’ Organisation” of October 1900 (special leaflet printed
      in St. Petersburg and referred to inIskra,
      No. 1). Both these sets of rules have one main shortcoming: they
      set up the broad workers’ organisation in a rigidly specified
      structure and confound it with the organisation of
      revolutionaries. Let us take the last-mentioned set of rules,
      since it is drawn up in greater detail. The body consists offifty-twoparagraphs. Twenty-three deal with the
      structure, the method of functioning, and the competence of the
      “workers’ circles”, which are to be organised in every factory
      (“a maximum of ten persons”) and which elect “central (factory)
      groups”. “The central group,” says paragraph 2, “observes all
      that goes on in its factory or workshop and keeps a record of
      events.” “The central group presents to subscribers a monthly
      financial account” (par. 17), etc. Ten paragraphs are devoted to
      the “district organisation”, and nineteen to the highly complex
      interconnection between the Committee of the Workers’
      Organisation and the Committee of the St.  Petersburg League of
      Struggle (elected representatives of each district and of the
      “executive groups” — “groups of propagandists, groups for
      maintaining contact with the provinces, and with the
      organisation abroad, groups for managing stores; publications,
      and funds”).

Social-Democracy = “executive groups” in relation to the
      economic struggle of the workers! It would be difficult to show
      more glaringly how the Economists’ ideas deviate from
      Social-Democracy to trade-unionism, and how alien to them is any
      idea that a Social-Democrat must concern himself first and
      foremost with an organisation of revolutionaries capable of
      guiding theentireproletarian struggle for
      emancipation.  To talk of “the political emancipation of theworking class” and of the struggle against “tsarist despotism”,
      and at the same time to draft rules like these, means to have no
      idea whatsoever of the real political tasks of
      Social-Democracy. Not one of the fifty or so paragraphs reveals
      even a glimmer of understanding that it is necessary to conduct
      the widest possible political agitation among the masses, an
      agitation highlighting every aspect of Russian absolutism and
      the specific features of the various social classes in
      Russia. Rules like these are of no use even for the achievement
      of trade union, let alone political, aims, since trade unions
      are organised bytrades, of which no mention is made.

But most characteristic, perhaps, is the amazing top-heaviness
      of the whole “system”, which attempts to bind each single
      factory and its “committee” by a permanent string of uniform and
      ludicrously petty rules and a three-stage system of
      election. Hemmed in by the narrow outlook of Economism, the mind
      is lost in details that positively reek of red tape and
      bureaucracy. In practice, of course, three-fourths of the
      clauses are never applied; on the other hand, a “secret”
      organisation of this kind, with its central group in each
      factory, makes it very easy for the gendarmes to carry out raids
      on a vast scale. The Polish cornrades have passed through a
      similar phase in their movement, with everybody enthusiastic
      about the extensive organisation of workers’ benefit funds; but
      they very quickly abandoned this idea when they saw that such
      organisations only provided rich harvests for the gendarmes. If
      we have in mind broad workers’ organisations, and not widespread
      arrests, if we do not want to provide satisfaction to the
      gendarmes, we must see to it that these organisations remain
      without any rigid formal structure. But will they be able to
      function in that case?

Let us see what the functions are: “. . . To observe all that
      goes on in the factory and keep a record of events” (par. 2 of
      the Rules). Do we really require a formally established group
      for this purpose? Could not the purpose be better served by
      correspondence conducted in the illegal papers without the
      setting up of special groups? “. . . To lead the struggles of
      the workers for the improvement of their workshop conditions”
      (par. 3). This, too, requires no set organisational form. Anysensible agitator can in the course of ordinary conversation
      gather what the demands of the workers are and transmit them to
      a narrow — not a broad — organisation of revolutionaries for
      expression in a leaflet. “ ... To organise a fund ... to which
      subscriptions of two kopeks per ruble[7]should
      be made” (par. 9) — and then to present to subscribers a
      monthly financial account (par. 17), to expel members who fail
      to pay their contributions (par. 10), and so forth. Why, this is
      a very paradise for the police; for nothing would be easier for
      them than to penetrate into such a secrecy of a “central factory
      fund”, confiscate the money, and arrest the best people. Would
      it not be simpler to issue one-kopek or two-kopek coupons
      bearing the official stamp of a well-known (very narrow and very
      secret) organisation, or to make collections without coupons of
      any kind and to print reports in a certain agreed code in an
      illegal paper? The object would thereby be attained, but it
      would be a hundred times more difficult for the gendarmes to
      pick up clues.

I could go on analysing the Rules, but I think that what has
      been said will suffice. A small, compact core of the most
      reliable, experienced, and hardened workers, with responsible
      representatives in the principal districts and connected by all
      the rules of strict secrecy with the organisation of
      revolutionaries, can, with the widest support of the masses and
      without any formal organisation, performallthe
      functions of a trade union organisation, in a manner, moreover,
      desirable to Social-Democracy.  Only in this way can we secure
      theconsolidationand development of aSocial-Democratictrade union movement, despite all the
      gendarmes.

It may be objected that an organisation which is solosethat it is not even definitely formed, and which
      has not even an enrolled and registered membership, cannot be
      called an organisation at all. Perhaps so. Not the name is
      important. What is important is that this “organisation without
      members” shall do everything that is required, and from the very
      outset ensure a solid connection between our future trade unions
      and socialism. Only an incorrigible utopian would have abroadorganisation of workers, with elections, reports,
      universal suffrage, etc., under the autocracy.

The moral to be drawn from this is simple. If we begin with the
      solid foundation of a strong organisation of revolutionaries, we
      can ensure the stability of the movement as a whole and carry
      out the aims both of Social-Democracy and of trade unions
      proper.  If, however, we begin with a broad workers’
      organisation, which is supposedly most “accessible” to the
      masses (but which is actually most accessible to the gendarmes
      and makes revolutionaries most accessible to the police), we
      shall achieve neither the one aim nor the other; we shall not
      eliminate our rule-of-thumb methods, and, because we remain
      scattered and our forces are constantly broken up by the police,
      we shall only make trade unions of the Zubatov and Ozerov type
      the more accessible to the masses.

What, properly speaking, should be the functions of the
      organisation of revolutionaries? We shall deal with this
      question in detail. First, however, let us examine a very
      typical argument advanced by our terrorist, who (sad fate!) in
      this matter also is a next-door neighbour to the
      Economist.Svoboda, a journal published for workers,
      contains in its first issue an article entitled “Organisation”,
      the author of which tries to defend his friends, the Economist
      workers of Ivanovo-Voznesensk. He writes:

“It is bad when the masses are mute and unenlightened, when the
      movement does not come from the rank and file. For instance, the
      students of a university town leave for their homes during the
      summer and other holidays, and immediately the workers’ movement
      comes to a standstill. Can a workers’ movement which has to be
      pushed on from outside be a real force? No, indeed.... It has
      not yet learned to walk, it is still in leading-strings. So it
      is in all matters. The students go off, and everything comes to
      a standstill. The most capable are seized; the cream is skimmed
      and the milk turns sour. If the ’committee’ is arrested,
      everything comes to a standstill until a new one can he
      formed. And one never knows what sort of committee will be set
      up next — it may be nothing like the former. The first said one
      thing, the second may say the very opposite. Continuity between
      yesterday and tomorrow is broken, the experience of the past
      does not serve as a guide for the future. And all because no
      roots have been struck in depth, in the masses; the work is
      carried on not by a hundred fools, but by a dozen wise men. A
      dozen wise men can be wiped out at a snap, but when the
      organisation embraces masses, everything proceeds from them, and
      nobody, however he tries, can wreck the cause” (p. 63).

“It is bad when the masses are mute and unenlightened, when the
      movement does not come from the rank and file. For instance, the
      students of a university town leave for their homes during the
      summer and other holidays, and immediately the workers’ movement
      comes to a standstill. Can a workers’ movement which has to be
      pushed on from outside be a real force? No, indeed.... It has
      not yet learned to walk, it is still in leading-strings. So it
      is in all matters. The students go off, and everything comes to
      a standstill. The most capable are seized; the cream is skimmed
      and the milk turns sour. If the ’committee’ is arrested,
      everything comes to a standstill until a new one can he
      formed. And one never knows what sort of committee will be set
      up next — it may be nothing like the former. The first said one
      thing, the second may say the very opposite. Continuity between
      yesterday and tomorrow is broken, the experience of the past
      does not serve as a guide for the future. And all because no
      roots have been struck in depth, in the masses; the work is
      carried on not by a hundred fools, but by a dozen wise men. A
      dozen wise men can be wiped out at a snap, but when the
      organisation embraces masses, everything proceeds from them, and
      nobody, however he tries, can wreck the cause” (p. 63).

The facts are described correctly. The picture of our amateurism
      is well drawn. But the conclusions are worthy ofRabochayaMysl, both as regards their stupidity and their lack of
      political tact. They represent the height of stupidity, because
      the author confuses the philosophical and social-historical
      question of the “depth” of the “roots” of the movement with the
      technical and organisational question of the best method in
      combating the gendarmes. They represent the height of political
      tactlessness, because, instead of appealing from bad leaders to
      good leaders, the author appeals from the leaders in general to
      the “masses” . This is as much an attempt to drag us back
      organisationally as the idea of substituting excitative
      terrorism for political agitation drags us back
      politically. Indeed, I am experiencing a veritableembarras
      de richesses, and hardly know where to begin to disentangle
      the jumble offered up bySvoboda. For clarity, let me
      begin by citing an example. Take the Germans. It will not be
      denied, I hope, that theirs is a mass organisation, that in
      Germany everything proceeds from the masses, that the
      working-class movement there has learned to walk. Yet observe
      how these millions value their “dozen” tried political leaders,
      how firmly they cling to them. Members of the hostile parties in
      parliament have often taunted the socialists by exclaiming:
      “Fine democrats you are indeed! Yours is a working-class
      movement only in name; in actual fact the same clique of leaders
      is always in evidence, the same Bebel and the same Liebknecht,
      year in and year out, and that goes on for decades. Your
      supposedly elected workers’ deputies are more permanent than the
      officials appointed by the Emperor!”  But the Germans only smile
      with contempt at these demagogic attempts to set the “masses”
      against the “leaders”, to arouse bad and ambitious instincts in
      the former, and to rob the movement of its solidity and
      stability by undermining the confidence of the masses in their
      “dozen wise men”. Political thinking is sufficiently developed
      among the Germans, and they have accumulated sufficient
      political experience to understand that without the “dozen”
      tried and talented leaders (and talented men are not born by the
      hundreds), professionally trained, schooled by long experience,
      and working in perfect harmony, no class in modern society can
      wage a determined struggle. The Germans too have had demagogues
      in their ranks who have flattered the “hundred fools”, exalted
      them above the “dozenwise men”, extolled the “horny hand” of
      the masses, and (like Most and Hasselmann) have spurred them on
      to reckless “revolutionary” action and sown distrust towards the
      firm and steadfast leaders. It was only by stubbornly and
      relentlessly combating all demagogic elements within the
      socialist movement that German socialism has managed to grow and
      become as strong as it is. Our wiseacres, however, at a time
      when Russian Social-Democracy is passing through a crisis
      entirely due to the lack of sufficiently trained, developed, and
      experienced leaders to guide the spontaneously awakening masses,
      cry out ,with the profundity of fools: “It is a bad business
      when the movement does not proceed from the rank and file.”

“A committee of students is of no use; it is not stable.” Quite
      true. But the conclusion to be drawn from this is that we must
      have a committee of professionalrevolutionaries, and
      it is immaterial whether a student or a worker is capable of
      becoming a professional revolutionary. The conclusion you draw,
      how. ever, is that the working-class movement must not be pushed
      on from outside! In your political innocence you fail to notice
      that you are playing into the hands of our Economists and
      fostering our amateurism.  Wherein, may I ask, did our students
      “push on” our workers?In the sensethat the student
      brought to the worker the fragments of political knowledge he
      himself possesses, the crumbs of socialist ideas he has managed
      to acquire (for the principal intellectual diet of the
      present-day student, legal Marxism, could furnish only the
      rudiments, only scraps of knowledge). There has never been too
      much ofsuch“pushing on from outside”; on the
      contrary, there has so far been all too little of it in our
      movement, for we have been stewing too assiduously in our own
      juice; we have bowed far too slavishly to the elementary
      “economic struggle of the workers against the employers and the
      government”. We professional revolutionaries must and will make
      it our business to engage inthis kindof “pushing on”
      a hundred times more forcibly than we have done hitherto. But
      the very fact that you select so hideous a phrase as “pushing on
      from outside” — a phrase which cannot but rouse in the workers
      (at least in the workers who are as unenlightened as you
      yourselves) a sense of distrust towardsallwho bringthem political knowledge and revolutionary experience from
      outside, which cannot but rouse in them an instinctive desire to
      resistallsuch people — proves you to be demagogues,
      anddemagoguesare the worst enemies of the working
      class.

And, please — don’t hasten howling about my “uncomradely
      methods” of debating. I have not the least desire to doubt the
      purity of your intentions. As I have said, one may become a
      demagogue out of sheer political innocence. But I have shown
      that you have descended to demagogy, and I will never tire of
      repeating that demagogues are the worst enemies of the working
      class. The worst enemies, because they arouse base instincts in
      the masses, because the unenlightened worker is unable to
      recognise his enemies in men who represent themselves, and
      sometimes sincerely so, as his friends. The worst enemies,
      because in the period of disunity and vacillation, when our
      movement is just beginning to take shape, nothing is easier than
      to employ demagogic methods to mislead the masses, who can
      realise their error only later by bitter experience. That is why
      the slogan of the day for the Russian Social-Democrat must be —
      resolute struggle against Svoboda andRabocheye Dyelo,
      both of which have sunk to the level of demagogy. We shall deal
      with this further in greater detail.[8]

“A dozen wise men can be more easily wiped out than a hundred
      fools.” This wonderful truth (for which the hundred fools will
      always applaud you) appears obvious only because in the very
      midst of the argument you have skipped from one question to
      another. You began by talking and continued to talk of the
      unearthing of a “committee”, of the unearthing of an
      “organisation”, and now you skip to the question of unearthing
      the movement’s “roots” in their “depths”. The fact is, of
      course, that our movement cannot be unearthed, for the very
      reason that it has countless thousands of roots deep down among
      the masses; but that is not the point at issue. As far as “deep
      roots” are concerned,we cannot be “unearthed” even now, despite
      all our amateurism, and yet we all complain, and cannot but
      complain, that the “organisations” are being unearthed
      and as a result it is impossible to maintain continuity in the
      movement. But since you raise the question oforganisationsbeing unearthed and persist in your
      opinion, I assert that it is far more difficult to unearth a
      dozen wise men than a hundred fools. This position I will
      defend, no matter how much you instigate the masses against me
      for my “anti-democratic” views, etc. As I have stated
      repeatedly, by “wise men”, in connection with organisation, I
      meanprofessional revolutionaries, irrespective of
      whether they have developed from among students or working
      men. I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure
      without a stable organisation of leaders maintaining continuity;
      (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into
      the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and
      participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an
      organisation, and the more solid this organisation must be (for
      it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the
      more backward sections of the masses); (3) that such an
      organisation must consist chiefly of people professionally
      engaged in revolutionary activity; (4) that in an autocratic
      state, the more weconfinethe membership of such an
      organisation to people who are professionally engaged in
      revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained
      in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult
      will it be to unearth the organisation; and (5) thegreaterwill be the number of people from the working
      class and from the other social classes who will be able to join
      the movement and perform active work in it.

I invite our Economists, terrorists, and “Economists-terrorists”[9]to
      confute these propositions. At the moment, I shall deal onlywith the last two points. The question as to whether it is
      easier to wipe out “a dozen wisemen” or “a hundred fools”
      reduces itself to the question, above considered, whether it is
      possible to have a massorganisationwhen the
      maintenance of strict secrecy is essential. We can never give a
      mass organisation that degree of secrecy without which there can
      be no question of persistent and continuous struggle against the
      government. To concentrate all secret functions in the hands of
      as small a number of professional revolutionaries as possible
      does not mean that the latter will “do the thinking for all” and
      that the rank and file will not take an active part in themovement. On the contrary, the membership will promote
      increasing numbers of the professional revolutionaries from its
      ranks; for it will know that it is not enough for a few students
      and for a few working men waging the economic struggle to gather
      in order to form a “committee”, but that it takes years to train
      oneself to be a professional revolutionary; and the rank and
      file will “think”, not only of amateurish methods, but of such
      training. Centralisation of the secret functions of theorganisationby no means implies centralisation of all
      the functions of themovement. Active participation of
      the widest masses in the illegal press will not diminish because
      a “dozen” professional revolutionaries centralise the secret
      functions connected with this work; on the contrary, it willincreasetenfold. In this way, and in this way alone,
      shall we ensure that reading the illegal press, writing for it,
      and to some extent even distributing it, willalmost cease
      to be secret work, for the police will soon come to realise
      the folly and impossibility of judicial and administrative
      red-tape procedure over every copy of a publication that is
      being distributed in the thousands. This holds not only for the
      press, but for every function of the movement, even for
      demonstrations. The active and widespread participation of the
      masses will not suffer; on the contrary, it will benefit by the
      fact that a “dozen” experienced revolutionaries, trainedprofessionally no less than the police, will centralise all the
      secret aspects of the work — the drawing up of leaflets, the
      working out of approximate plans; and the appointing of bodies
      of leaders for each urban district, for each institution,
      etc. (I know that exception will be taken to my “undemocratic”
      views, but I shall reply below fully to this anything but
      intelligent objection.)  Centralisation of the most secret
      functions in an organisation of revolutionaries will not
      diminish, but rather increase the extent and enhance the quality
      of the activity of a large number of other organisations that
      are intended for a broad public and are therefore as loose and
      as non-secret as possible, such as workers’ trade unions;
      workers’ self-education circles and circles for reading illegal
      literature; and socialist, as well as democratic, circles amongallother sections of the population; etc., etc. We
      must have such circles, trade unions, and organisations
      everywhere inas large a number as possibleand with
      the widest variety of functions; but it would be absurd and
      harmfulto confoundthem with the organisation ofrevolutionaries, to efface the border-line between
      them, to make still more hazy the all too faint recognition of
      the fact that in order to “serve” the mass movement we must have
      people who will devote themselves exclusively to
      Social-Democratic activities, and that such people musttrainthemselves patiently and steadfastly to be
      professional revolutionaries.

Yes, this recognition is incredibly dim. Our worst sin with
      regard to organisation consists in the fact that byour
      primitiveness we have lowered the prestige of revolutionaries in
      Russia. A person who is flabby and shaky on questions of
      theory, who has a narrow outlook, who pleads the spontaneity of
      the masses as an excuse for his own sluggishness, who resembles
      a trade union secretary more than a spokesman of the people, who
      is unable to conceive of a broad and bold plan that would
      command the respect even of opponents, and who is inexperienced
      and clumsy in his own professional art — the art of combating
      the political police — such a man is not a revolutionary, but a
      wretched amateur!

Let no active worker take offence at these frank remarks, for as
      far as insufficient training is concerned, I apply them first
      and foremost to myself. I used to work in a study circle[23]thatset itself very broad, all-embracing tasks; and all of us,
      members of that circle, suffered painfully and acutely from the
      realisation that we were acting as amateurs at a moment in
      history when we might have been able to say, varying a
      well-known statement: “Give us an organisation of
      revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia” The more I recall
      the burning sense of shame I then experienced, the bitterer
      become my feelings towards those pseudo-Social-Democrats whose
      preachings “bring disgrace on the calling of a revolutionary”,
      who fail to understand that our task is not to champion the
      degrading of the revolutionary to the level of an amateur, but
      toraisethe amateurs to the level of revolutionaries.

We have heard B-v tell us about “the lack of revolutionary
      forces fit for action which is felt not only in St. Petersburg,
      but throughout Russia”. Hardly anyone will dispute this
      fact. But the question is, how is it to be explained? B-v
      writes:

“We shall not go into an explanation of the historical causes of
      this phenomenon; we shall merely state that a society,
      demoralised by prolonged political reaction and split by past
      and present economic changes, promotes from its own ranks anextremely small number of persons fit for revolutionary
      work; that the working class does produce revolutionary
      workers who to some extent reinforce the ranks of the illegal
      organisations, but that the number of such revolutionaries is
      inadequate to meet the requirements of the times. This is all
      the more so because the worker who spends eleven and a half
      hours a day in the factory is in such a position that he can, in
      the main, perform only the functions of an agitator; but
      propaganda and organisation, the delivery and reproduction of
      illegal literature, the issuance of leaflets, etc., are duties
      which must necessarily fall mainly upon the shoulders of an
      extremely small force of intellectuals” (Rabocheye
      Dyelo, No. 6, pp. 38-39).

“We shall not go into an explanation of the historical causes of
      this phenomenon; we shall merely state that a society,
      demoralised by prolonged political reaction and split by past
      and present economic changes, promotes from its own ranks anextremely small number of persons fit for revolutionary
      work; that the working class does produce revolutionary
      workers who to some extent reinforce the ranks of the illegal
      organisations, but that the number of such revolutionaries is
      inadequate to meet the requirements of the times. This is all
      the more so because the worker who spends eleven and a half
      hours a day in the factory is in such a position that he can, in
      the main, perform only the functions of an agitator; but
      propaganda and organisation, the delivery and reproduction of
      illegal literature, the issuance of leaflets, etc., are duties
      which must necessarily fall mainly upon the shoulders of an
      extremely small force of intellectuals” (Rabocheye
      Dyelo, No. 6, pp. 38-39).

On many points we disagree with B-v, particularly with those we
      have emphasised, which most saliently reveal that, although
      weary of our amateurism (as is every thinking practical worker),
      B-v cannot find the way out of this intolerable situation
      because he is weighted down by Economism. The fact is that
      society produces verymanypersons fit for “the cause”,but we are unable to make use of them all. The critical,
      transitional state of our movement in this respect may be
      formulated as follows:There are no people — yet there is a
      mass of people. There is a mass of people, because the
      working class and increasingly varied social strata, year after
      year, produce from their ranks an increasing number of
      discontented people who desire to protest, who are ready to
      render all the assistance they can in the struggle against
      absolutism, the intolerableness of which, though not yet
      recognised by all, is more and more acutely sensed by increasing
      masses of the people. At the same time, we have no people,
      because we have no leaders, no political leaders, no talented
      organisers capable of arranging. extensive and at the same time
      uniform and harmonious work that would employ all forces, even
      the most inconsiderable. “The growth and development of the
      revolutionary organisations” lag, not only behind the growth of
      the working-class movement, which even B-v admits, but behind
      that of the general democratic movement among all strata of the
      people. (In passing, probably B-V would now regard this as
      supplementing his conclusion.) The scope of revolutionary work
      is too narrow, as compared with the breadth of the spontaneous
      basis of the movement. It is too hemmed in by the wretched
      theory of “economic struggle against the employers and the
      government”. Yet, at the present time, not only
      Social-Democratic political agitators, but Social-Democratic
      organisers must “go among all classes of the population”.[10][10]Thus, an undoubted revival of the democratic spirit has recently been
	  observed among persons in military service, partly as a
      consequence of the more frequent street battles with “enemies”
      like workers and students. As soon as our available forces
      permit, we must without fail devote the most serious attention
      to propaganda and agitation among soldiers and officers, and to
      the creation of “military organisations” affiliated to our
      Party.—LeninThere is hardly a single practical worker who will doubt that the
      Social-Democrats could distribute the thousand and one minute
      functions of their organisational work among individual
      representatives of the most varied classes. Lack of
      specialisation is one of the most serious defects of our
      technique, about which B-v justly and bitterly complains. The
      smaller each separate “operation” in our common cause the morepeople we can find capable of carrying out such operations
      (people who, in the majority of cases, are completely incapable
      of becoming professional revolutionaries); more difficult will
      it be for the police to “net” all these “detail workers”, and
      the more difficult will it be for them to frame up, out of an
      arrest for some petty affair, a “case” that would justify the
      government’s expenditure on “security”. As for the number of
      people ready to help us, we referred in the preceding chapter to
      the gigantic change that has taken place in this respect in the
      last five years or so. On the other hand, in order to unite all
      these tiny fractions into one whole, in order not to break up
      the movement while breaking up its functions, and in order to
      imbue the people who carry out the minute functions with the
      conviction that their work is necessary and important, without
      which conviction they will never do the work,[11][11]I recall that once a comrade told me of a factory inspector who
	  wanted to help the Social-Democrats, and actually did, but
      complained bitterly that he did not know whether his
      “information” reached the proper revolutionary centre, how much
      his help was really required, and what possibilities there were
      for utilising his small and petty services. Every practical
      worker can, of course, cite many similar instances in which our
      primitiveness deprived us of allies.  These services, each
      “small” in itself, but invaluable when taken in the mass, could
      and would be rendered to us by office employees and officials,
      not only in factories, but in the postal service, on the
      railways, in the Customs, among the nobility, among the clergy,
      and ineveryother walk of life, including even the
      police and the Court!  Had we a real party, a real militant
      organisation of revolutionaries, we would not make undue demands
      on every one of these “aides”, we would not hasten always and
      invariably to bring them right into the very heart of our
      “illegality”, but, on the contrary, we would husband them most
      carefully and would even train people especially for such
      functions, bearing in mind that many students could be of much
      greater service to the Party as “aides” holding some official
      post than as “short-term” revolutionaries. But, I repeat, only
      an organisation that is firmly established and has no lack of
      active forces would have the right to apply such tactics.—Leninit is necessary to
      have a strong organisation of tried revolutionaries. The more
      secret such an organisation is, the stronger and more widespread
      will be the confidence in the Party. As we know, in time of war,
      it is not only of the utmost importance to imbue one’s own army
      with confidence in its strength, but it is important also to
      convince the enemy and allneutralelements of this
      strength;friendly neutrality may sometimes decide the issue. If
      such an organisation existed, one built up on a firm theoretical
      foundation and possessing a Social-Democratic organ, we should
      have no reason to fear that the movement might be diverted from
      its path by the numerous “outside” elements that are attracted
      to it. (On the contrary, it is precisely at the present time,
      with amateurism prevalent, that we see many Social-Democrats
      leaning towards theCredoand only imagining that they
      are Social Democrats.) In a word, specialisation necessarily
      presupposes centralisation, and in turn imperatively calls for
      it.

But B-v himself, who has so excellently described the necessity
      for specialisation, underestimates its importance, in our
      opinion, in the second part of the argument we have quoted. The
      number of working-class revolutionaries is inadequate, he says.
      This is perfectly true, and once again we stress that the “valuable
	  communication of a close observer” fully confirms our
      view of the causes of the present crisis in Social-Democracy,
      and, consequently, of the means required to overcome it. Not
      only are revolutionaries in general lagging behind the
      spontaneous awakening of the masses, but even
      worker-revolutionaries are lagging behind the spontaneous
      awakening of the working-class masses. Thisfactconfirms with clear evidence, from the “practical” point of
      view, too, not only the absurdity but even thepolitically
      reactionary natureof the “pedagogics” to which we are so
      often treated in the discussion of our duties to the
      workers. This fact proves that our very first and most pressing
      duty is to help to train working-class revolutionaries who will
      he on the same levelin regard to Party activityas the
      revolutionaries from amongst the intellectuals (we emphasise the
      words “in regard to Party activity”, for, although necessary, it
      is neither so easy nor so pressingly necessary to bring the
      workers up to the level of intellectuals in other
      respects). Attention, therefore, must be devotedprincipally
      to raisingthe workers to the level of revolutionaries; it
      is not at all our taskto descendto the level of the
      “working masses” as the Economists wish to do, or to the level
      of the “average worker” asSvobodadesires to do (and
      by this ascends to the second grade of Economist
      “pedagogics”). I am far from denying the necessityfor popular literature for the workers, and especially popular (of course,
      not vulgar) literature for the especially backward workers. But
      what annoys me is this constant confusion of pedagogics with
      questions of politics and organisation. You, gentlemen, who are
      so much concerned about the “average worker”, as a matter of
      fact, rather insult the workers by your desireto talk
      downto them when discussing working-class politics and
      working-class organisation. Talk about serious things in a
      serious manner; leave pedagogics to the pedagogues, and not to
      politicians and organisers! Are there not advanced people,
      “average people”, and “masses” among the intelligentsia too?
      Does not everyone recognise that popular literature is also
      required for the intelligentsia, and is not such literature
      written? Imagine someone, in an article on organising college or
      high-school students, repeating over and over again, as if he
      had made a new discovery, that first of all we must have an
      organisation of “average students”. The author of such an
      article would be ridiculed, and rightly so. Give us your ideas
      on organisation, if you have any, he would be told, and we
      ourselves will decide who is “average”, who above average, and
      who below. But if you have no organisational ideasof your
      own, then all your exertions in behalf of the “masses” and
      “average people” will be simply boring. You must realise that
      these questions of “politics” and “organisation” are so serious
      in themselves that they cannot be dealt with in any other but a
      serious way. We can and musteducateworkers (and
      university and Gymnasium students) so that wemay be able to
      discussthese questions with them. But once you do bring up
      these questions, you must give real replies to them; do not
      fall back on the “average”, or on the “masses”; do not try to
      dispose of the matter with facetious remarks and mere
      phrases.[12]

To be fully prepared for his task, the worker-revolutionary must
      likewise become a professional revolutionary. Hence B-v is wrong
      in saying that since the worker spends eleven and a half hours
      in the factory, the brunt of all other revolutionary functions
      (apart from agitation) “must necessarilyfall mainly
      upon the shoulders of an extremely small force of
      intellectuals”. But this condition does not obtain out of sheer
      “necessity”. It obtains because we are backward, because we do
      not recognise our duty to assist every capable worker to become
      aprofessionalagitator, organiser, propagandist,
      literature distributor, etc., etc. In this respect, we waste our
      strength in a positively shameful manner; we lack the ability to
      husband that which should be tended and reared with special
      care. Look at the Germans: their forces are a hundredfold
      greater than ours. But they understand perfectly well that
      really capable agitators, etc., are not often promoted from the
      ranks of the “average”. For this reason they immediately try to
      place every capable working man in conditions that will enable
      him to develop and apply his abilities to the fullest: he is
      made a professional agitator, he is encouraged to widen the
      field of his activity, to spread it from one factory to the
      whole of the industry, from a single locality to the whole
      country. He acquires experience and dexterity in his profession;
      he broadens his outlook and increases his knowledge; he observes
      at close quarters the prominent political leaders from other
      localities and of other parties; he strives to rise to their
      level and combine in himself the knowledge of the working-class
      environment and the freshness of socialist convictions with
      professional skill, without which. the proletariatcannotwage a stubborn struggle against its excellently trained
      enemies. In this way alone do the working masses produce men of
      the stamp of Bebel and Auer. But what is to a great extent
      automatic in a politically free country must in Russia be done
      deliberately and systematically by our organisations. A
      worker-agitator who is at all gifted and “promising”must
      not be leftto work eleven hours a day in a factory. We
      must arrange that he be maintained by the Party; that he may go
      underground in good time; that he change the place of his
      activity, if he is to enlarge his experience, widen his outlook,and be able to hold out for at least a few years in the struggle
      against the gendarmes. As the spontaneous rise of their movement
      becomes broader and deeper, the working-class masses promote
      from their ranks not only an increasing number of talented
      agitators, but also talented organisers, propagandists, and
      “practical workers” in the best sense of the term (of whom there
      are so few among our intellectuals who, for the most part, in
      the Russian manner, are somewhat careless and sluggish in their
      habits). When we have forces of specially trained
      worker-revolutionaries who have gone through extensive
      preparation (and, of course, revolutionaries “of all arms of the
      service”), no political police in the world will then be able to
      contend with them, for these forces, boundlessly devoted to the
      revolution, will enjoy the boundless confidence of the widest
      masses of the workers. We are directly toblamefor
      doing too little to “stimulate” the workers to take this path,
      common to them and to the “intellectuals”, of professional
      revolutionary training, and for all too often dragging them back
      by our silly speeches about what is “accessible” to the masses
      of the workers, to the “average workers”, etc.

In this, as in other respects, the narrow scope of our
      organisational work is without a doubt due directly to the fact
      (although the overwhelming majority of the “Economists” and the
      novices in practical work do not perceive it) that we restrict
      our theories and our political tasks to a narrow
      field. Subservience to spontaneity seems to inspire a fear of
      taking even one step away from what is “accessible” to the
      masses, a fear of rising too high above mere attendance on the
      immediate and direct requirements of the masses. Have no fear,
      gentlemen! Remember that we stand so low on the plane of
      organisation that the very idea that we could risetoohigh is absurd!

Yet there are many people among us who are so sensitive to the
      “voice of life” that they fear it more than anything in the world
      and charge the adherents of the views here expounded with
      following a Narodnaya Volya line,with failing to understand
      “democratism”, etc. These accusations, which, of course, have been
      echoed byRabocheye Dyelo, need to be dealt with.

The writer of these lines knows very well that the
      St. Petersburg Economists levelled the charge of Narodnaya Volya
      tendencies also againstRabochaya Gazeta(which is
      quite understandable when one compares it withRabochaya
      Mysl). We were not in the least surprised, therefore, when,
      soon after the appearance ofIskra, a comrade informed
      us that the Soclal-Democrats in the town of X describeIskraas a Narodnaya Volya organ. We, of course, were
      flattered by this accusation; for what decent Social-Democrat
      has not been accused by the Economists of being a Narodnaya
      Volya sympathiser?

These accusations are the result of a twofold
      misunderstanding. First, the history of the revolutionary movement
      is so little known among us that the name “Narodnaya Volya” is
      used to denote any idea of a militant centralised organisation
      which declares determined war upon tsarism. But the magnificent
      organisation that the revolutionaries had in the seventies, and
      that should serve us as a model, was not established by the
      Narodnaya Volya, but by theZemlya i Volya, which split
      up into the Chorny Peredel and the Narodnaya Volya. Consequently,
      to regard a militant revolutionary organisation as something
      specifically Narodnaya Volya in character is absurd both
      historically and logically; fornorevolutionary trend,
      if it seriously thinks of struggle, can dispense with such an
      organisation. The mistake the Narodnaya Volya committed was not in
      striving to enlist all the discontented in the organisation and to
      direct this organisation to resolute struggle against the
      autocracy; on the contrary, that was its great historical
      merit. The mistake was in relying on a theory which in substance
      was not a revolutionary theory at all, and the Narodnaya Volya
      members either did not know how, or were unable, to link their
      movement inseparably with the class struggle in the developing
      capitalist society. Only a gross failure to understand Marxism (or
      an “understanding” of it in the spirit of “Struveism”) could
      prompt the opinion that the rise of a mass, spontaneous
      working-class movementrelievesus of the duty of
      creating as good an organisation of revolutionaries as the Zemlyai Volya had, or, indeed, an incomparably better one. On the
      contrary, this movementimposesthe duty upon us; for the
      spontaneous struggle of the proletariat will not become its
      genuine “class struggle” until this struggle is led by a strong
      organisation of revolutionaries.

Secondly, many people, including apparently B. Krichevsky
      (Rabocheye Dyelo, No. 10, p. 18), misunderstand the
      polemics that Social-Democrats have always waged against the
      “conspiratorial” view of the political struggle. We have always
      protested, and will, of course, continue to protest againstconfiningthe political struggle to conspiracy.[13]But this
      does not, of course, mean that we deny the need for a strong
      revolutionary organisation. Thus, in the pamphlet mentioned in the
      preceding footnote, after the polemics against reducing the
      political struggle to a conspiracy, a description is given (as a
      Social-Democratic ideal) of an organisation so strong as to be
      able to “resort to. . .rebellion” and to every other form of
      attack, in order to “deliver a smashing blow against
      absolutism”.[14]Informsuch a strong revolutionary organisation in an autocratic country may also be
      described as a “conspiratorial” organisation, because the French
      word “conspiration” is the equivalent of the Russian word
      “zagovar” (“conspiracy”), and such an organisation must
      have the utmost secrecy. Secrecy is such a necessary condition for
      this kind of organisation that all the other conditions (number
      and selection of members, functions, etc.) must be made to conformto it. It would be extremely naive indeed, therefore, to fear the
      charge that we Social-Democrats desire to create a conspiratorial
      organisation. Such a charge should be as flattering to every
      opponent of Economism as the charge of following a Narodnaya Volya
      line.

The objection may be raised that such a powerful and strictly
      secret organisation, which concentrates in its hands all the
      threads of secret activities, an organisation which of necessity
      is centralised, may too easily rush into a premature attack, may
      thoughtlessly intensify the movement before the growth of
      political discontent, the intensity of the ferment and anger of
      the working class, etc., have made such an attack possible and
      necessary. Our reply to this is: Speaking abstractly, it cannot
      be denied, of course, that a militant organisation may
      thoughtlessly engage in battle, whichmayend in a
      defeat entirely avoidable under other conditions. But we cannot
      confine ourselves to abstract reasoning on such a question,
      because every battle bears within itself the abstract
      possibility of defeat, and there is no way ofreducingthis possibility except by organised preparation for
      battle. If, however, we proceed from the concrete conditions at
      present obtaining in Russia, we must come to the positive
      conclusion that a strong revolutionary organisation is
      absolutely necessary precisely for the purpose of giving
      stability to the movement and ofsafeguardingit
      against the possibility of making thoughtless attacks. Precisely
      at the present time, when no such organisation yet exists, and
      when the revolutionary movement is rapidly and spontaneously
      growing, wealready observetwo opposite extremes
      (which, as is to be expected, “meet”). These are: the utterly
      unsound Economism and the preaching of moderation, and the
      equally unsound “excitative terror”, which strives “artificially
      to call forth symptoms of the end of the movement, which is
      developing and strengthening itself, when this movement is as
      yet nearer to the start than to the end” (V. Zasulich, inZarya, No. 2-3, p. 353). And the instance ofRabocheye Dyeloshows thatthereexist 
	  Social-Democrats who give way to both these
      extremes. This is not surprising, for, apart from other reasons,
      the “economic struggle against the employers and the government”canneversatisfy revolutionaries, and opposite
      extremes will therefore always appear here and there. Only a
      centralised, militant organisation that consistently carries out
      a Social-Democratic policy, that satisfies, so to speak, all
      revolutionary instincts and strivings, can safeguard the
      movement against making thoughtless attacks and prepare attacks
      that hold out the promise of success.

A further objection may be raised, that the views on
      organisation here expounded contradict the “democratic
      principle”. Now, while the earlier accusation was specifically
      Russian in origin, this oneis specifically foreignin
      character. And only an organisation abroad (the Union of Russian
      Social-Democrats Abroad) was capable of giving its Editorial Board
      instructions like the following:

“Organisational Principle.In order to secure the
      successful development and unification of Social-Democracy, the
      broad democratic principle of Party organisation must be
      emphasised, developed, and fought for; this is particularly
      necessary in view of the anti-democratic tendencies that have
      revealed themselves in the ranks of our Party” (Two
      Conferences, p. 18).

“Organisational Principle.In order to secure the
      successful development and unification of Social-Democracy, the
      broad democratic principle of Party organisation must be
      emphasised, developed, and fought for; this is particularly
      necessary in view of the anti-democratic tendencies that have
      revealed themselves in the ranks of our Party” (Two
      Conferences, p. 18).

We shall see in the next chapter howRabocheye DyelocombatsIskra’s “anti-democratic tendencies”. For the
      present, we shall examine more closely the “principle” that the
      Economists advance. Everyone will probably agree that “the broad
      democratic principle” presupposes the two following conditions:
      first, full publicity, and secondly, election to all offices. It
      would be absurd to speak of democracy without publicity,
      moreover, without a publicity that is not limited to the
      membership of the organisation. We call the German Socialist
      Party a democratic organisation because all its activities are
      carried out publicly; even its party congresses are held in
      public. But no one would call an organisation democratic that is
      hidden from every one but its members by a veil of secrecy. What
      is the use, then, of advancing “thebroaddemocratic
      principle” when the fundamental condition for this principlecannot be fulfilledby a secret organisation? “The
      broad principle” proves itself simply to be a resounding but
      hollow phrase. Moreover, it reveals a total lack of
      understanding of the urgent tasks of the moment in regard to
      organisation. Everyone knows how great the lack of secrecy is
      among the “broad” massesof our revolutionaries. We have heard
      the bitter complaints of B-v on this score and his absolutely
      just demand for a “strict selection of members” (Rabocheye
      Dyelo, No. 6, p. 42). Yet, persons who boast a keen “sense
      of realities”urge, in a situation like this, not the
      strictest secrecy and the strictest (consequently, more
      restricted) selection, of members, but “the broaddemocratic principle”! This is what you call being wide of
      the mark.

Nor is the situation any better with regard to the second
      attribute of democracy, the principle of election. In
      politically free countries, this condition is taken for
      granted. “They are members of the Party who accept the
      principles of the Party programme and render the Party all
      possible support,” reads Clause 1 of the Rules of the German
      Social-Democratic Party. Since the entire political arena is as
      open to the public view as is a theatre stage to the audience,
      this acceptance or non-acceptance, support or opposition, is
      known to all from the press and from public meetings. Everyone
      knows that a certain political figure began in such and such a
      way, passed through such and such an evolution, behaved in a
      trying moment in such and such a manner, and possesses such and
      such qualities; consequently,allparty members,
      knowing all the facts, can elect or refuse to elect this person
      to a particular party office. The general control (in the
      literal sense of the term) exercised over every act of a party
      man in the political field brings into existence an
      automatically operating mechanism which produces what in biology
      is called the “survival of the fittest”. “Natural selection” by
      full publicity, election, and general control provides the
      assurance that, in the last analysis, every political figure
      will be “in his proper place”, do the work for which lie is best
      fitted by his powers and abilities, feel the effects of his
      mistakes on himself, and prove before all the world his ability
      to recognise mistakes and to avoid them.

Try to fit this picture into the frame of our autocracy! Is it
      conceivable in Russia for all who accept the principles of the
      Party programme and render the Party all possible support to
      control every action of the revolutionary working in secret? Is
      it possible for all to elect one of these revolutionaries to any
      particular office, when, in the very interests of the work, the
      revolutionary must conceal his identity from nine out of ten ofthese “all”? Reflect somewhat over the real meaning of the
      high-sounding phrases to whichRabocheye Dyelogives
      utterance, and you will realise that “broad democracy” in Party
      organisation, amidst the gloom of the autocracy and the
      domination of gendarmerie, is nothing more than auseless
      and harmfultoy. It is a useless toy because, in point of
      fact, no revolutionary organisation has ever practiced, or could
      practice,broaddemocracy, however much it may have
      desired to do so. It is a harmful toy because any attempt to
      practise “the broad democratic principle” will simply facilitate
      the work of the police in carrying out large-scale raids, will
      perpetuate the prevailing primitiveness, and will divert the
      thoughts of the practical workers from the serious and pressing
      task of training themselves to become professional
      revolutionaries to that of drawing up detailed “paper” rules for
      election systems. Only abroad, where very often people with no
      opportunity for conducting really active work gather, could this
      “playing at democracy” develop here and there, especially in
      small groups.

To show the unseemliness ofRabocheye Dyelo’s
    favourite trick of advancing the plausible “principle” of
    democracy in revolutionary affairs, we shall again summon a
    witness. This witness, Y. Serebryakov, editor of the London
    magazine,Nakanune, has a soft spot forRabocheye
    Dyeloand is filled with a great hatred for Plekhanov and the
    “Plekhanovites”. In its articles on the split in the Union of
    Russian Social-Democrats Abroad,Nakanunedefinitely
    sided withRabocheye Dyeloand poured a stream of petty
    abuse upon Plekhanov. All the more valuable, therefore, is this
    witness in the question at issue. InNakanunefor July
    (No. 7) 1899, an article entitled “Concerning the Manifesto of the
    Self-Emancipation of the Workers Group”, Serebryakov argued that
    it was “indecent” to talk about such things as “self-deception,
    leadership, and the so-called Areopagus in a serious revolutionary
    movement” and,inter alia, wrote:

“Myshkin, Rogachov, Zhelyabov, Mikhailov,
    Perovskaya, Figner, and others never regarded themselves as
    leaders, and no one ever elected or appointed them as such,
    although in actuality, they were leaders, because, in the
    propaganda period, as well as in the period of the struggle
    against the government, they took the brunt of the work upon
    themselves, they went into the most dangerous places, and theiractivities were the most fruitful. They became leaders, not
    because they wished it, but because the comrades surrounding them
    had confidence in their wisdom, in their energy, in their
    loyalty. To be afraid of some kind of Areopagus (if it is not
    feared, why write about it?) that would arbitrarily govern the
    movement is far too naive. Who would pay heed to it?”

“Myshkin, Rogachov, Zhelyabov, Mikhailov,
    Perovskaya, Figner, and others never regarded themselves as
    leaders, and no one ever elected or appointed them as such,
    although in actuality, they were leaders, because, in the
    propaganda period, as well as in the period of the struggle
    against the government, they took the brunt of the work upon
    themselves, they went into the most dangerous places, and theiractivities were the most fruitful. They became leaders, not
    because they wished it, but because the comrades surrounding them
    had confidence in their wisdom, in their energy, in their
    loyalty. To be afraid of some kind of Areopagus (if it is not
    feared, why write about it?) that would arbitrarily govern the
    movement is far too naive. Who would pay heed to it?”

We ask the reader, in what way does the “Areopagus” differ from
    “anti  democratic tendencies”? And is it not evident thatRabocheye Dyelo’s “plausible” organisational principle is
    equally naive and indecent; naive, because no one would pay heed
    to the “Areopagus”, or people with “anti- democratic tendencies”,
    if “the comrades surrounding them had” no “confidence in their
    wisdom, energy, and loyalty”; indecent, because it is a demagogic
    sally calculated to play on the conceit of some, on the ignorance
    of others regarding the actual state of our movement, and on the
    lack of training and the ignorance of the history of the
    revolutionary movement on the part of still others. The only
    serious organisational principle for the active workers of our
    movement should he the strictest secrecy, the strictest selection
    of members, and the training of professional
    revolutionaries. Given these qualities, something even more than
    “democratism” would be guaranteed to us, namely, complete,
    comradely, mutual confidence among revolutionaries. This is
    absolutely essential for us, because there can be no question of
    replacing it by general democratic control in Russia. It would be
    a great mistake to believe that the impossibility of establishing
    real “democratic” control renders the members of the revolutionary
    organisation beyond control altogether. They have not the time to
    think about toy forms of democratism (democratism within a close
    and compact body of comrades in which complete, mutual confidence
    prevails), but they have a lively sense of theirresponsibility, knowing as they do from experience that
    an organisation of real revolutionaries will stop at nothing to
    rid itself of an unworthy member. Moreover, there is a fairly
    well-developed public opinion in Russian (and international)
    revolutionary circles which has a long history behind it, and
    which sternly and ruthlessly punishes every departure from the
    duties of comradeship (and “democratism”, real and not toy
    democratism, certainly forms a component part of the conception ofcomradeship). Take all this into consideration and you will
    realise that this talk and these resolutions about
    “anti-democratic tendencies” have the musty odour of the playing
    at generals which is indulged in abroad.

It must be observed also that the other source of this talk,
    viz., naivete is likewise fostered by the confusion of ideas
    concerning the meaning of democracy. In Mr. and Mrs. Webb’s book
    on the English trade unions there is an interesting chapter
    entitled “Primitive Democracy”. In it the authors relate how the
    English workers, in the first period of existence of their unions,
    considered it an indispensable sign of democracy for all the
    members to do all the work of managing the unions; not only were
    all questions decided by the vote of all the members, but all
    official duties were fulfilled by all the members in turn. A long
    period of historical experience was required for worker’s to
    realise the absurdity of such a conception of democracy and to
    make them understand the necessity for representative
    institutions, on the one hand, and for full-time officials, on the
    other. Only after a number of cases of financial bankruptcy of
    trade union treasuries had occurred did the workers realise that
    the rates of contributions and benefits cannot be decided merely
    by a democratic vote, but that this requires also the advice of
    insurance experts. Let us take also Kautsky’s book on
    parliamentarism and legislation by the people. There we find that
    the conclusions drawn by the Marxist theoretician coincide with
    the lessons learned from many years of practical experience by the
    workers who organised “spontaneously”. Kautsky strongly protests
    against Rittinghausen’s primitive conception of democracy; he
    ridicules those who in the name of democracy demand that “popular
    newspapers shall be edited directly by the people”; he shows the’
    need forprofessionaljournalists, parliamentarians,
    etc., for the Social-Democratic leadership of the proletarian
    class struggle; he attacks the socialism of anarchists andlitterateurswho in their “striving for effect” extol
    direct legislation by the whole people, completely failing to
    understand that this idea can be applied only relatively in modern
    society.

Those who have performed practical work in our movement know
    how widespread the “primitive” conception of democracy is amongthe masses of the students and workers. It is not surprising that
    this conception penetrates also into rules of organisations and
    into literature. The Economists of the Bernsteinian persuasion
    included in their rules the following: “§ 10. All affairs
    affecting the interests of the whole of the union organisation
    shall be decided by a majority vote of all its members.” The
    Economists of the terrorist persuasion repeat after them. “The
    decisions of the committee shall become effective only after they
    have been referred to all the circles”(Svoboda, No. 1,
    p. 67). Observe that this proposal for a widely applied referendum
    is advancedin additionto the demand thatthe whole
    ofthe organisation be built on an elective basis! We would
    not, of course, on this account condemn practical workers who have
    had too few opportunities for studying the theory and practice of
    real democratic organisations. But whenRabocheye Dyelo,
    which lays claim to leadership, confines itself, under such
    conditions, to a resolution on broad democratic principles, can
    this be described as anything but a mere “striving for
    effect”?

The objections raised against the plan of organisation here
    outlined on the grounds that it is undemocratic and conspiratorial
    are totally unsound. Nevertheless, there remains a question which
    is frequently put and which deserves detailed examination. This is
    the question of the relations between local work and all-Russia
    work. Fears are expressed that the formation of a centralised
    organisation may shift the centre of gravity from the former to
    the latter, damage the movement through weakening our contacts
    with the working masses and the continuity of local agitation
    generally. To these fears we reply that our movement in the past
    few years has suffered precisely from the fact that local workers
    have been too absorbed in local work; that therefore it is
    absolutely necessary to shift the centre of gravity somewhat to
    national work; and that, far from weakening this would strengthen
    our ties and the continuity of our local agitation. Let us take
    the question of central and local newspapers. I would ask the
    reader not to forget that we cite the publication of newspapers
    only asan exampleillustrating an immeasurably broaderand more varied revolutionary activity in general.

In the first period of the mass movement (1896-98), an attempt
    was made by local revolutionary workers to publish an all-Russia
    paper —Rabochaya Gazeta. In the next period
    (1898-1900), the movement made an enormous stride forward, but the
    attention of the leaders was wholly absorbed by local
    publications. If we compute the total number of the local papers
    that were published, we shall find that on the average one issue
    per month was published.[15]Does this not clearly illustrate our
    amateurism? Does this not clearly show that our revolutionary
    organisation lags behind the spontaneous growth of the movement?
    Ifthe same numberof issues had been published, not by
    scattered local groups, but by a single organisation, we would not
    only have saved an enormous amount of effort, but we would have
    secured immeasurably greater stability and continuity in our
    work. This simple point is frequently lost sight of by those
    practical workers who workactivelyand almost
    exclusively on local publications (unfortunately this is true even
    now in the overwhelming majority of cases), as well as by the
    publicists who display an astonishing quixotism on this
    question. The practical workers usually rest content with the
    argument that “it is difficult”[16][16]This difficulty is more apparent than real. In fact,there is nota single local study circle that lacks the opportunity of taking up some 
	function or other in connection with all-Russia work. “Don’t say,
	I can’t; say, I won’t.”—Leninfor local workers to engage in the
    organisation of an all-Russia newspaper, and that local newspapers
    are better than no newspapers at all. This argument is, of course,
    perfectly just, and we, no less than any practical worker,
    appreciate the enormous importance and usefulness of local
    newspapersin general.But not this is the point. The
    point is, can we not overcome the fragmentation and primitiveness
    that are so glaringly expressed in the thirty issues of local
    newspapers that have been published throughout Russia in the
    course of two and a half years? Do not restrict yourselves to the
    indisputable, but too general, statement about the usefulness oflocal newspapers generally; have the courage frankly to admit
    their negative aspects revealed by the experience of two and a
    half years. This experience has shown that under the conditions in
    which we work, these local newspapers prove, in the majority of
    cases, to be unstable in their principles, devoid of political
    significance, extremely costly in regard to expenditure of
    revolutionary forces, and totally unsatisfactory from a technical
    point of view (I have in mind, of course, not the technique of
    printing, but the frequency and regularity of publication). These
    defects are riot accidental; they are the inevitable outcome of
    the fragmentation which, on the one hand, explains the
    predominance of local newspapers in the period under review, and,
    on the other, isfostered bythis predominance. It is
    positively beyond the strength of a separate local organisation to
    raise its newspaper to the level of a political organ maintaining
    stability of principles; it isbeyond its strengthto
    collect and utilise sufficient material to shed light on the whole
    of our political life. The argument usually advanced to support
    the need for numerous local newspapers in free countries that the
    cost of printing by local workers is low and that the people can
    be kept more fully and quickly informed — this argument as
    experience has shown, speaksagainstlocal newspapers in
    Russia. They turn out to be excessively costly in regard to the
    expenditure of revolutionary forces, and appear very rarely, for
    the simple reason that the publication of anillegalnewspaper, however small its size, requires an extensive secret
    apparatus, such as is possible with large-scale factory
    production; for this apparatus cannot be created in a small,
    handicraft workshop. Very frequently, the primitiveness of the
    secret apparatus (every practical worker can cite numerous cases)
    enables the police to take advantage of the publication and
    distribution of one or two issues to makemassarrests,
    which result in such a clean sweep that it becomes necessary to
    start all over again. A well-organised secret apparatus requires
    professionally well-trained revolutionaries and a division of
    labour applied with the greatest consistency, but both these
    requirements are beyond the strength of a separate local
    organisation, however strong it may be at any given moment. Notonly the general interests of our movement as a whole (training of
    the workers in consistent socialist and political principles) but
    also specifically local interests arebetter served by
    non-local newspapers. This may seem paradoxical at first
    sight, but it has been proved to the hilt by the two and a half
    years of experience referred to. Everyone will agree that had all
    the local forces that were engaged in the publication of the
    thirty issues of newspapers worked on a single newspaper, sixty,
    if not a hundred, issues could easily have been published, with a
    fuller expression, in consequence, of all the specifically local
    features of the movement. True, it is no easy matter to attain
    such a degree of organisation, but we must realise the need for
    it. Every local study circle must think about it andwork
    activelyto achieve it, without waiting for an impetus from
    outside, without being tempted by the popularity and closer
    proximity of a local newspaper which, as our revolutionary
    experience has shown, proves to a large extent to be illusory.

And it is a bad service indeed those publicists render to the
      practical work who, thinking themselves particularly (close to
      the practical workers, fail to see this illusoriness, and make
      shift with the astoundingly hollow and cheap argument that we
      must have local newspapers, we must have district newspapers,
      and we must have all-Russia newspapers. Generally speaking, of
      course, all these are necessary, but once the solution of a
      concrete organisational problem is undertaken, surely time and
      circumstances must be taken into consideration. Is it not
      quixotic forSvoboda(No. 1, p. 68) to write in a
      special article “dealing withthe question of a
      newspaper”: “It seems to us that every locality, with any
      appreciable number of workers, should have its own workers’
      newspaper; not a newspaper imported from somewhere, but its very
      own.” If the publicist who wrote these words refuses to think of
      their meaning, then at least the reader may do it for him. How
      many scores, if not hundreds, of “localities” with any
      appreciable number of workers there are in Russia, and what a
      perpetuation of our amateurish methods this would mean if indeed
      every local organisation set about publishing its
      own. newspaper! How this diffusion would facilitate the
      gendarmerie’s task of netting — and without “any appreciable”
      effort — the local revolutionary workers at the very outset oftheir activity and of preventing them from developing into real
      revolutionaries. A reader of an all-Russia newspaper, continues
      the author, would find little interest in the descriptions of
      the. malpractices of the factory owners and the “details of
      factory life in various towns not his own”. But “an inhabitant
      of Orel would not find Orel affairs dull reading. In every issue
      he would learn who had been ’picked for a lambasting’ and who
      had been ’flayed’, and he would be in high spirits”
      (p. 69). Certainly, the Orel reader is in high spirits, but our
      publicist’s flights of imagination are also high — too high. He
      should have asked himself whether such concern with trivialities
      is tactically in order. We are second to none in appreciating
      the importance and necessity of factory exposures, but it must
      be borne in mind that we have reached a stage when
      St. Petersburg folk find it dull reading the St. Petersburg
      correspondence of the St. PetersburgRabochaya
      Mysl. Leaflets are the medium through which local factory
      exposures have always beenand must continueto be
      made, but we must raise the level of thenewspaper, not
      lower it to the level of a factory leaflet. What we ask of a
      newspaper is not so much “petty” exposures, as exposures of the
      major, typical evils of factory life, exposures based on
      especially striking facts and capable, therefore, of arousing
      the interest of all workers and all leaders of the movement, of
      really enriching their knowledge, broadening their outlook, and
      serving as a starting-point for awakening new districts and
      workers from ever-newer trade areas.

“Moreover, in a local newspaper, all the malpractices of the
      factory administration and other authorities may he denounced
      then and there. In the case of a general, distant newspaper,
      however, by the time the news reaches it the facts will have
      been forgotten in the source localities. The reader, on getting
      the paper, will exclaim: ’When was that-who remembers it?’”
      (ibid.). Precisely — who remembers it! From the same
      source we learn that the 30 issues of newspapers which appeared
      in the course of two and a half years were published in six
      cities. This averagesone issue per city per half-year!
      And even if our frivolous publicisttrebledhis
      estimate of the productivity of local work (which would be wrong
      in the case of an average town, since it is impossible toincrease productivity to any considerable extent by our
      rule-of-thumb methods), we would still get only one issue every
      two months, i.e., nothing at all like “denouncing then and
      there”. It would suffice, however, for ten local organisations
      to combine and send their delegates to take an active part in
      organising a general newspaper, to enable us every fortnight to
      “denounce”, over thewhole of Russia, not petty, but
      really outstanding and typical evils. No one who knows the state
      of affairs in our organisations can have the slightest doubt on
      that score. As for catching the enemy red-handed — if we mean
      it seriously and not merely as a pretty phrase — that is quite
      beyond the ability of an illegal paper generally. It can be done
      only by a leaflet, because the time limit for exposures of that
      nature can be a day or two at the most (e.g., the usual brief
      strikes, violent factory clashes, demonstrations, etc.).

“The workers live not only at the factory, but also in the
      city,” continues our author, rising from the particular to the
      general, with a strict consistency that would have done honour
      to Boris Krichevsky himself; and he refers to matters like
      municipal councils, municipal hospitals, municipal schools, and
      demands that workers’ newspapers should not ignore municipal
      affairs in general.

This demand — excellent in itself — serves as a particularly
      vivid illustration of the empty abstraction to which discussions
      of local newspapers are all too frequently limited. In the first
      place, if indeed newspapers appeared “in every locality with any
      appreciable number of workers” with such detailed information on
      municipal affairs asSvobodadesires, this would, under
      our Russian conditions, inevitably degenerate into actual
      concern with trivialities, lead to a weakening of the
      consciousness of the importance of an all-Russia revolutionary
      assault upon the tsarist autocracy, and strengthen the extremely
      virile shoots — not uprooted but rather hidden or temporarily
      suppressed — of the tendency that has become noted as a result
      of the famous remark about revolutionaries who talk a great deal
      about non-existent parliaments and too little about existent
      municipal councils. We say “inevitably”, in order to emphasise
      thatSvobodaobviously does not desire this, but the
      contrary, to come about. But good intentions are not enough. For
      municipal affairs to be dealt with in their proper perspective,in relation to our entire work, this perspective mustfirstbe clearly conceived, firmly established, not
      only by argument, but by numerous examples, so that it may
      acquire the stability of atradition. This is still far
      from being the case with us. Yet this must be donefirst, before we can allow ourselves to think and talk
      about an extensive local press.

Secondly, to write really well and interestingly about municipal
      affairs, one must have first-hand knowledge, not book knowledge,
      of the issues. But there are hardly any Social-Democratsanywhere in Russiawho possess such knowledge. To be
      able to write in newspapers (not in popular pamphlets) about
      municipal and state affairs, one must have fresh and varied
      material gathered and written up by able people. And in order to
      be able to gather and write up such material, we must have
      something more than the “primitive democracy” of a primitive
      circle, in which everybody does everything and all entertain
      themselves by playing at referendums. It is necessary to have a
      staff of expert writers and correspondents, an army of
      Social-Democratic reporters who establish contacts far and wide,
      who are able to fathom all sorts of “state secrets” (the
      knowledge of which makes the Russian government official so
      puffed up, but the blabbing of which is such an easy matter to
      him), who are able to penetrate “behind the scenes” — an army
      of’ people who must, as their “official duty”, be ubiquitous and
      omniscient. And we, the Party that fights against all economic,
      political, social, and national oppression, can and must find,
      gather, train, mobilise, and set into motion such an army of
      omniscient people — all of which requires still to be done. Not
      only has not a single step in this direction been taken in the
      overwhelming majority of localities, but even the recognition of
      its necessity is very often lacking. One will search in vain in
      our Social-Democratic press for lively and interesting articles,
      correspondence, and exposures dealing with our big and little
      affairs — diplomatic, military, ecclesiastical, municipal,
      financial, etc., etc. There isalmost nothing, or very
      little, about these matters.[17]That is why “it always annoys mefrightfully when a man comes to me, utters beautiful and
      charming words” about the need for newspapers in “every locality
      with any appreciable number of workers” that will expose
      factory, municipal, and government evils.

The predominance of the local papers over a central press may be
      a sign of either poverty or luxury. Of poverty, when the
      movement has not yet developed the forces for large-scale
      production, continues to flounder in amateurism, and is all but
      swamped with “the petty details of factory life”. Of luxury,
      when the movementhas fully masteredthe task of
      comprehensive exposure and comprehensive agitation, and it
      becomes necessary to publish numerous local newspapers in
      addition to the central organ. Let each decide for himself what
      the predominance of local newspapers implies in present-day
      Russia. I shall limit myself to a precise formulation of my own
      conclusion, to leave no grounds for misunderstanding. Hitherto,
      the majority of our local organisations have thought almost
      exclusively in terms of local newspapers, and have devoted
      almost all their activities to this work. This is abnormal; the
      very opposite should have been the case. The majority of the
      local organisations should think principally of the publication
      of an all-Russia newspaper and devote their activities chiefly
      to it. Until this is done, we shall not be able to establish asinglenewspaper capable, to any degree, of serving the
      movement withcomprehensivepress agitation. When this
      is done, however, normal relations between the necessary central
      newspaper and the necessary local newspapers will be established
      automatically.

It would seem at first glance that the conclusion on the
      necessity for shifting the centre of gravity from local to
      all-Russia work does not apply to the sphere of the specifically
      economic struggle. In this struggle, the immediate enemies of
      the  workers are the individual employers or groups of
      employers, who are not bound by any organisation having even the
      remotest resemblance to the purely military, strictly
      centralised organisation of the Russian Government — our
      immediate enemy in the political struggle — which is led in all
      its minutest details by a single will.

But that is not the case. As we have repeatedly pointed out, the
      economic struggle is a trade struggle, and for that reason it
      requires that the workers be organised according to trades, not
      only according to place of employment. Organisation by trades
      becomes all the more urgently necessary, the more rapidly our
      employers organise in all sorts of companies and syndicates. Our
      fragmentation and our amateurism are an outright hindrance to
      this work of organisation which requires the existence of a
      single, all-Russia body of revolutionaries capable of giving
      leadership to the all-Russia trade unions. We have described
      above the type of organisation that is needed for this purpose;
      we shall now add but a few words on the question of our press in
      this connection.

Hardly anyone will doubt the necessity for every
      Social-Democratic newspaper to have aspecial
      departmentdevoted to the trade union (economic)
      struggle. But the growth of the trade union movement compels us
      to think about the creation of a trade union press. It seems to
      us, however, that with rare exceptions, there can be no question
      of trade union newspapers in Russia at the present time; they
      would be a luxury, and many a time we lack even our daily
      bread. The form of trade union press that would suit the
      conditions of our illegal work and is already required at the
      present time istrade union pamphlets.In these
      pamphlets,legal[18]and illegal material should be
	  gathered and grouped systematically, on the working conditions
      in a given trade, on the differences in this respect in the
      various parts of, Russia; on the main demands advanced by the
      workers in the given trade; on the inadequacies of legislation
      affecting that trade; on outstanding instances of economic
      struggle by the workers in the trade; on the beginnings, the
      present state, and the requirements of their trade union
      organisation, etc. Such pamphlets would, in the first place,
      relieve our Social-Democratic press of a mass of trade details
      that are of interest only to workers in the given
      trade. Secondly, they would record the results of our experience
      in the trade union struggle, they would preserve the gathered
      material, which now literally gets lost in a mass of leaflets
      and fragmentary correspondence; and they would summarise this
      material. Thirdly, they could serve as guides for agitators,
      because working conditions change relatively slow ly and the
      main demands of the workers in a given trade are extremely
      stable (cf., for example, the demands advanced by the weavers in
      the Moscow district in 1885 and in the St. Petersburg district
      in 1896). A compilation of such demands and needs might serve
      for years as an excellent handbook for agitators on economicquestions in backward localities or among the backward strata of
      the workers. Examples of successful strikes in a given region,
      information on higher living standards, on improved working
      conditions, in one locality, would encourage the workers in
      other localities to take up the fight again and again. Fourthly,
      having made a start in generalising the trade union struggle and
      in this way strengthening the link between the Russian trade
      union movement and socialism, the Social-Democrats would at the
      same time see to it that our trade union work occupied neither
      too small nor too large a place in our Social-Democratic work as
      a whole. A local organisation that is cut off from organisations
      in other towns finds it very difficult, sometimes almost
      impossible, to maintain a correct sense of pro portion (the
      example ofRabochaya Myslshows what a monstrous
      exaggeration can be made in the direction of trade-unionism) But
      an all-Russia organisation of revolutionaries that stands
      undeviatingly on the basis of Marxism, that leads the entire
      political struggle and possesses a staff of professional
      agitators, will never find it difficult to determine the proper
      proportion.

[1]Rabochaya MyslandRabocheye Dyelo, especially theReplyto Plekhanov.—Lenin

[2]See
    “Who Will Bring About the Political Revolution?” in the
    collection published in Russia, entitledThe Proletarian
    Struggle.Re-issued by the Kiev Committee.—Lenin

[3]Regeneration of Revolutionismand the journalSvoboda.—Lenin

[4]SeeCollected Works, Vol. 5, p. 18—Ed.

[5]German “loose”.—Ed.

[6]Iskra’s 
	campaign against the tares evoked the following angry outburst fromRabocheye Dyelo: “ForIskra, the signs of the
    times lie not so much in great events [of the spring], as in the
    miserable attempts of the agents of Zubatov to ’legalise’ the
    working-class movement. It fails to see that these facts tell
    against it; for they testify that the working-class movement has
    assumed menacing proportions in the eyes of the government”
    (Two Conferences, p. 27). For all this we have to blame
    the “dogmatism” of the orthodox who “turn a deaf ear to the
    imperative demands of life”. They obstinately refuse to see the
    yard-high wheat and are combating inch-high tares! Does this not
    reveal a “distorted sense of perspective in regard to the Russian 
	working-class movement” (ibid., p. 27)?—Lenin

[7]Of wages earned.—Tr.

[8]For the
    moment let us observe merely that our remarks on “pushing on
    from outside” andSvoboda’sother disquisitions on
    organisation apply intheir entirety to allthe
    Economists, including the adherents ofRabocheye Dyelo;
    for some of them have actively preached and defended such views
    on organisation, while others among them have drifted into them.—Lenin

[9]This
    term is perhaps more applicable toSvobodathan the
    former, for in an article entitled “The Regeneration of
    Revolutionisin” the publication defends terrorism, while in the
    article at present under review it defends Economism. One might
    say ofSvobodathat “it would if it could, but it
    can’t”. Its wishes and intentions are of the very best — but
    the result is utter confusion; this is chiefly due to the fact
    that, whileSvobodaadvocates continuity of
    organisation, it refuses to recognise continuity of
    revolutionary thought and Social-Democratic theory. It wants to
    revive the professional revolutionary (“The Regeneration ofRevolutionism”), and to that end proposes, first, excitative
    terrorism, and, secondly, — an organisation of average workers"
    (Svoboda, No. 1, p. 66, et seq.), as less likely to be
    “pushed on from outside”. In other words, it proposes to pull
    the house down to use the timber for heating it.—Lenin

[10]Note:This footnote has
	been moved into the body of the document.

[11]Note:This footnote has 
	been moved into the body of the document.

[12]Svoboda, No. 1, p. 66, in the article “Organisation”:
    “The heavy tread of the army of workers will reinforce all the
    demands that will be advanced in behalf of Russian Labour” —
    Labour with a capital L, of course. And the author exclaims: “I
    am not in the least hostile towards the intelligentsia, but [but
    — the word that Shchedrin translated as meaning: The ears never
    grow higher than the forehead!] — but I always get frightfully
    annoyed when a man comes to me uttering beautiful and charming
    words and demands that they be accepted for their [his?]  beauty
    and other virtues” (p. 62). Yes, I always get “frightfully
    annoyed”, too.—Lenin

[13]Cf. The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats, p. 21,polemics against P. L. Lavrov. (SeeCollected Works,Vol. 2, 
	pp. 340-41. —Ed.)—Lenin

[14]The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats, p. 23.(SeeCollected Works, Vol. 2, p. 342. —Ed.)Apropos, we
    shall give another illustrationofthe fact thatRabocheye Dyeloeither does not understand what it is
    talking about or changes its views “with the wind”. In No. 1 ofRabocheye Dyelo, we find the following passage in
    italics: “The substance set forth in the pamphlet accords
    entirely with the editorial programme of ’Rabocheye Dyelo’”
    (p. 142).Really? Does the view that the overthrow of the
    autocracy must not be set as the first taskofthe mass
    movement accord with the views expressed inThe Tasks of the
    Russian Social-Democrats?Do the theory of “the
    economic struggle against the employers and the government” and
    the stages theory accord with the views expressed in that
    pamphlet? We leave it to the reader to judge whether a
    periodical that understands the meaning of “accordance in
    opinion” in this peculiar manner can have firm principles.—Lenin

[15]SeeReport to the Paris
	Congress,[24]p. 14. From that time
    (1897) to the spring of 1900, thirty issues of various papers
    were published in various places.... On an average, over one
    issue per month was published".—Lenin

[16]Note:This footnote has
	been moved into the body of the document.

[17]That is why even examples of exceptionally good local newspapers
    fully confirm our point of view. For example,Yuzhny
    Rabochy[25]is an excellent newspaper, entirely free of
    instability of principle. But it has been unable to provide whatit desired for the local movement, owing to the infrequency of
    its publication and to extensive police raids. Principled
    presentation of the fundamental questions of the movement and
    wide political agitation, which our Party most urgently requires
    at the present time, has proved too big a job for the local
    newspaper. The material of particular value it has published,
    like the articles on the mine owners’ convention and on
    unemployment, was not strictly local material,it was
    required for the whole of Russia, not for the South
    alone. No such articles have appeared in any of our
    Social-Democratic newspapers.—Lenin

[18]Legal material is particularly important in this connection, and
    we are particularly behind in our ability to gather and utilise
    it systematically. It would not be an exaggeration to say that
    one could somehow compile a trade union pamphlet on the basissolely of legal material, but it could not be done on the basis
    of illegal material alone. In gathering illegal material from
    Workers oil questions like those dealt with in the publications
    ofRabochaya Mysl, we waste a great deal of the efforts
    of revolutionaries (whose place in this work could very easily
    be taken by legal workers), and yet we never obtain good
    material. The reason is that a worker who very often knows only
    a single department of a large factory and almost always the
    economic results, but not the general conditions and standards
    of his work, cannot acquire the knowledge which is possessed by
    the office staff of a factory, by inspectors, doctors, etc., and
    which is scattered in petty newspaper reports and in special
    industrial, medical, Zemstvo, and other publications.

I vividly recall my “first experiment”, which I would never like
    to repeat.  I spent many weeks “examining” a worker, who would
    often visit me, regarding every aspect of the conditions
    prevailing in the enormous factory at which he was
    employed. True, after great effort, I managed to obtain material
    for a description (of the one single factory!), but at the end
    of the interview the worker would wipe the sweat from his brow,
    and say to me smilingly: ’I find it easier to work overtime than
    to answer your questions.”

The more energetically we carry on our revolutionary struggle,
    the more the government will be compelled to legalise part of
    the “trade union” work, thereby relieving us of part of our
    burden.—Lenin

[19]The full name of this small organisation wasWorkers’ Group for the
    Struggle Against Capital; its views were close to those of the
    “Economists”. The group was formed in St. Petersburg in the spring of
    1899; it prepared a mimeographed leaflet, “Our Programme”, which was
    never circulated, owing to the arrest of the group.

[20]N. N.—pseudonym of S. N. Prokopovich, an active
    “Economist” who later became a Cadet.

[21]Vasilyev, N. V.—Colonel of the Gendarmes, supporter of the
    Zubatov “police socialism”.

Ozerov, I. Kh. and Worms, A. E.—professors at Moscow
	University, spokesmen for the “police socialism” of Zubatov.

[22]Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna—a patriarchal
    family of petty provincial landlords in Gogol’sOld-Time
    Landowners.

[23]Lenin refers here to his own revolutionary activity in St. Petersburg
    in 1893-95.

[24]The reference is to the pamphletReport on the Russian
    Social-Democratic Movement to International Socialist Congress in Paris,
    1900. The Report was submitted to the Congress by the Editorial Board
    ofRabocheye Dyeloon behalf of the Union of Russian
    Social-Democrats Abroad and was published as a separate pamphlet in Geneva
    in 1901; the pamphlet also contained the report of the Bund (“The History
    of the Jewish Working-Class Movement in Russia and Poland”).

[25]Yuzhny Rabochy(The Southern Worker)—a
    Social-Democratic newspaper, illegally published from January 1900 to
    April 1903 by a group of that name; twelve issues appeared.